Sermons on Acts

Some translations use the word “generosity” instead of simplicity, and that’s because the word we’re looking at is somewhere between idiom and metaphor in the original Greek. The word is “aphelotes” and its literal translation is something like “the opposite of stubbing your toe.” It’s something you do on accident, without even realizing it until you feel its affects later. The historian is describing a simple-heartedness, a tenderness. It’s the kind of tenderness that makes you take off your coat and gently drape it over your partner’s shoulders when you see they’re cold, without even having a moment’s thought about how cold you’ll now be. They gave to one another in the way you “give” to your spouse; the way you “give” to someone who’s so intimately tied to you that it doesn’t even feel like giving so much as transferring from one account to another.