Stubbing Your Toe

Have you ever stubbed your toe? Of course you have. It’s terrible, isn’t it? The worst, in my opinion, is stubbing the pinky toe. When the Florida Gators basketball team was playing in the 2000 National Championship game, I jumped off the couch in celebration at one point and stubbed my pinky toe on our coffee table. If I think about it, I can still feel the pain coursing through my body twenty years later (it was almost as bad as the pain of losing that game!).

Stubbing a toe hurts, and that is why it is such a fitting analogy for lack of unity in the church. You might not have heard somebody make that analogy, but the Greek language does that for us. You see, Acts 2:46 says the new church members were together “day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, [and] they received their food with glad and generous hearts.” I want you to think about that phrase generous hearts. 

In Greek the word generous literally means, “without rock, smooth, simple, or single.” Without rock? How does “without rock” turn into generous hearts? When everyone was getting along, things were nice and smooth; there were no rocks to make the path difficult, and no one was stubbing their toe. The opposite is to have a rocky road and many stubbed toes, including pinky toes. This is the scene depicted by lack of unity in the church. 

When church members fight with one another they are casting stones into the path where they are liable to be kicked by other people. They are creating an environment where people have to watch their step at all times. There are no generous hearts (or singleness/simplicity of hearts in the KJV and NKJV). 

What kind of path are you creating? Are you smoothing out the road by your actions, or are you laying down a rock bed? You can smooth the path by being forgiving, merciful, gentle, meek, loving, patient, and understanding. You can add rocks to the path by being selfish, hateful, bitter, unforgiving, and forcing people to take sides with a “my way or the highway” approach.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9).” Peacemakers remove the rocks from the path and help other people get along. Nobody wants a stubbed toe, so let’s not add any rocks to this world’s already rocky road.