To climb out of the muck and mire this country has chosen to
wallow in for the last 8 years, we will have to begin the task of slowly,
painstakingly, cleaning up our messes, and putting things back on a right
course. It is an interesting human
phenomenon that when the time for real work begins, few are found who are
willing. This is true in our churches,
and even in the depths of our characters as well. It is said 20% of the people do 80% of the
work. This applies to business, church
services, and life in general. It is a
truism that can readily be verified simply by looking around. But that’s the trick isn’t it? The looking around, rather than the working,
is ‘why’ the expression is so true. We
gladly look to others to accomplish the hard work, while trying our best to
avoid it for ourselves.
Poor President Elect Obama, who will he find that will be
willing to actually do the work to fix our broken nation? Oh sure there will be cabinet appointments,
and a majority in both houses to vote in legislation; but that is not where the
real work is required. The real work is
required of us. We will be asked to
sacrifice. To cut back our spending on
unnecessary things; to try to limit our use of fossil fuels; to become more
energy conscience and energy aware. We
may have to buy more expensive cars, live in less expensive housing, take
public transit more often. We may see
the loss of jobs because not every sector of our economy ‘can’ be fixed. We may have to pay more taxes to pay for the
mess we are in. Not inconsequential
changes. And without them, we will
remain in our mess, and pass the legacy to our children, and them to theirs.
Our spiritual condition is not much different than our
political one. We get all excited about
the good news of Salvation. We marvel at
the absolute love of God, the magnitude of the gift He offers, and lengths of
the work He has done for us. But the
work of surrender, the hard work, we cannot seem to find the time to do. The work of service to others, we choose to
limit to things that are easy to us, or at least easier. The inconvenient work, we leave to
others.
No one likes doing dishes in their own homes, let alone for
an entire church body after a potluck.
At least 80% of the members will eat, and then rush home, not giving a
second thought to the cleaning work that remains to be done in the church. No thought is given about how much work it
takes to prepare a church for a pot luck meal, way beyond the preparation and
transport of the food each family may bring.
Long before, tables are setup, chairs laid out, decorations placed, not
to mention the coordination and placement of the mass of food itself.
And who usually does this rather mundane, but important prep
work and clean up work, the little old ladies that do it because no one else
will. Those who feel the weight of
personal responsibility for getting the required work done. Those who do not, eat and run, but delay
their own meals to serve others, and delay their own agendas to clean up after
others. Any wonder why the prayer
warriors in any given church body are usually the same folks who do these
otherwise thankless tasks.
Christians blind themselves to the beauty of service,
because they wish not to inconvenience themselves. It is a deception of evil that has worked
very well, particularly in our times.
The ease of life increases, requiring less and less hard work to
survive. We do not hunt out food
anymore, or go without if we miss. We
simply drive to the local supermarket and buy pre-prepared foods of every
kind. We do not build our own shelters
and get wet if we do not do the work properly; we move into prepared homes
built by professionals long before our arrival.
With the absence of urgency in the work we do for our survival, and the
increase in leisure time, we have lost the value in ‘real’ work. We have placed the value in ‘real’ play
instead. Serving others takes away from
our ‘play’ time, so we avoid it, or limit it to easy things we knock off in a
flash, then feel good about later.
The motives are all wrong.
The priorities are all wrong. The
value proposition is all wrong. The
beauty of service is not defined by the ease of which it is accomplished, but
by the difficulty. It is not the glory
of a martyr we seek, but the employment of our full ability for others without
a thought of reward, compensation, or recognition. The service we do for others, ‘is’ itself our
reward. The knowledge of having made a
‘real’ difference in the life of someone else, is the prize of heaven
itself. We do not seek to serve to
boast. We do not perform the mundane
tasks in front of us to be recognized, but to create happiness in our experience.
There is so little happiness in the world, and in our lives,
because we look for it in the wrong places.
We try to fill our time with moments of joy over shopping and
acquisition, instead of finding hours of joy in the memories of true and noble
service to others. We choose the
temporary fleeting seconds of a high, instead of the lifelong, transforming
influences that bring fulfillment, contentment, and improvements to the lives
of others. Evil has so poisoned our
minds that we find ourselves barely willing to serve the ones we state that we
love. To serve those who do not know us,
has become almost completely foreign in our minds. To serve those who do not like us at all, our
enemies, is unheard of anymore.
The words of Christ to “love our enemies” have lost all
meaning in our ears. We refuse to humble
ourselves, act first, and serve incessantly those who would do us harm. We look to scripture that touts an “eye for an
eye”, without understanding its true meaning.
An “eye for an eye” is about what justice would demand, IF NOT FOR
GRACE. Jesus said for us to “love” our
enemies. When we do this, we become hard
to hate. It is difficult to keep on
hitting someone who does not hit back.
There is no question about who wins the argument or the fight; in short,
they do, our enemy does. But who wins
the war with evil, is the one who reflects love, in the face of anything. In so doing, we turn enemies into friends,
broken relationships are mended, as love is the only thing able to heal such
wounds.
It is not convenient to serve. It will always seem like sacrifice, but this
is because evil will always position it that way to our eyes. The reality of sacrifice is relative. I know people who tirelessly serve others and
think nothing of it. I also know those
who barely go out of their way, and cannot seem to tolerate the immense gravity
of the tiny work they perform. Christ
did not think it too great to die to redeem us.
He sacrificed His very life to save us.
But that was not all he was willing to go through. First he suffered torture and humiliation,
almost to the point of death. We find it
hard to help out the local church for a potluck. What would make the God of the Universe not
think it too great a sacrifice to be tortured and killed for His love for us;
while we find it a great burden to be inconvenienced to help someone else
out? Blindness. We indulge in it.
Time to take the scales off our eyes and see service for the
blessing it truly is. Throughout time
and memorial God will know what He did for us, in that He saved us. He will have the satisfaction of having given
us His all. We can know that joy, by
simply learning to give ourselves to others too. We are not asked to die for each other. There is not survival at stake any more in
our lives. But we can give our time, our
meager resources, our cheerful spirit.
We can work in simple tasks right in front of our eyes, that will
quietly benefit the lives of others like nothing else can. In so doing, we change the core of who we are. We realize the truth. We shed the inconvenience and regain the rich
beauty that was ours for the taking. We
learn fulfillment. And we begin to see
heaven in a new and real way, right here and right now …
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