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“Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and tomorrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee” (Proverbs 3:27-28).
When I was a boy, I had what they called a “paper route,” and delivered the daily paper to a number of homes. Every Saturday I collected the money people owed me for bringing the paper. Sometimes people were busy outside, or perhaps watching a football game on television, and would say, “I’ll pay you next week.” I did not like this, for later that day a representative from the newspaper company came to our house, and I had to pay him for the papers. What was left over was my pay, and if too many people did not pay me, I did not get very much that week.
As our verse tells us, it is good to look after our obligations instead of being selfish and forgetting that the other person may really need what we are supposed to give him. My paper customers were not poor; they could well afford to pay me for their paper (it was only 30 cents a week in those days!). Sometimes they just could not be bothered to go and get it. Let us not act like that, as Christians.
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