The lame man at the gate

He has been here every day for years. Longer than anyone can remember.

The man is over forty years old and he has never walked. Every morning someone carries him to the Beautiful Gate — archaeologists believe this was the Nicanor Gate on the eastern side of the Court of Women, faced in bronze so massive it took twenty men to open it. He sets him down at the threshold. He asks for money. People pass. Some drop coins. Most don't look at him.

It is three in the afternoon, the hour of prayer, and two men are coming through the gate. The man does what he always does: he asks for money. Peter stops. Looks directly at him. Says the words that will change everything: Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you.

Then he reaches down, takes the man's right hand, and pulls him to his feet.

The healing is immediate and almost absurdly complete. The man's feet and ankles are instantly strong. He doesn't wobble or learn to walk — he leaps. He walks and jumps and goes into the temple courts with them, praising God at the top of his voice.

The people who see him know exactly who he is. They have walked past him for years. They recognize his face from the gate. And now he is standing in the temple, jumping, and they are filled with wonder and amazement at what has happened to him.

Within minutes Peter is preaching again — the second sermon in a week — and the number of believers grows to five thousand.

Peter didn't apologize for what he didn't have. He offered what he did have — and it turned out to be the only thing that mattered.

The church has spent a great deal of its history trying to acquire silver and gold so it could do more good. The first church had almost none, and it turned the world upside down. That's not an argument for poverty. It's a question about what we actually believe we're carrying.

What have you been given to give? Not what you wish you had — what you actually have, right now, today?