Week 42 Acts
While the Lord was still on earth his disciples revered him as their sage, their master, their teacher. Every important decision ran through him.
But when the Lord left for good the disciples had to start figuring out some things for themselves.
One thing that was new was how they handled their money: all the believers met together constantly and shared everything they had. They sold their possessions and shared the proceeds with those in need.
Giving away all your money is pretty impressive.
Even more impressive is that I don’t get any sense of heavy-handed you-gotta-sell-all-your-possessions messaging. It sounds more like a spontaneous, voluntary, feeling-okay-about-it willingness: all the believers were of one heart and mind, and they felt that what they owned was not their own; they shared everything they had.
Ananias and Sapphira sold land and only gave a percentage of the money. The problem for them was that they publicized that they gave all of it. Peter told Ananias how stupidly unnecessary a lie that was because technically speaking Ananias could have kept it all for himself: the property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it the money was yours to give away.
So I guess you could decide to give nothing at all.
Unless you really wanted to give, in which case the sky was the limit.
Note: quotes from Acts 2:44-45, 4:32, 5:4 (NLT)