Imagine that Jesus is calling you today. He extends a second invitation to accept His Father’s love. And maybe you answer, “Oh, I know that. It’s old hat.” … And God answers, ‘No, that’s what you don’t know. You don’t know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God, not man. You tell others about Me – your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obnoxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart.
~ Brennan Manning
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in 1 Corinthians 3
And this is where the problem begins.
When we get involved in the building of this Kingdom, we put everything we have into it. Oh, mostly we blunder about and fail. But sometimes, and on the better days and weeks and months, we make a difference:
We touch the life of a student
We meet a need that no one else did
We Love a person who was faltering without it
We help an addict get free
We write something that someone needed to read
We encourage a friend who is changing the world
We give Life to dozens in need
We feed someone who would, perhaps, die without our help.
And then… the people we have been helping leave, and go on into some other work or place or situation. They are no longer under our care. In this space, what can emerge is a dull angst and a worry that all the work we have done, will come apart.
Hopefully beloved, you are tracking with this fool of a writer.
Can we see it? The problem we have is that we forget that we are doing the work of G_d. It is His work. And in G_d being Who He Is, He is more than able to have another part of His body do more of His work with the people who leave us. The fabric He is weaving is made of Love – and thus of His very own Self. It cannot be torn.
We are vital to His plans, just as any aspect of a body is vital to another. However, we are not the Head, nor are we The Heart. We are a part that has been adopted into a vast and working organism over which The King of the universe has complete control. And so, when we start to wonder whether our work will stand when someone leaves, it is a little like an eye saying “I wonder if that object will exist when I quit looking at it.”
So, are you feeling like your work in the Kingdom will not last? You may want to abandon that feeling beloved. The One who holds eternity in His hands is weaving all of our failures and successes together into something more amazing than we could ever imagine. He is indeed working all things together for good.
Tonight is your night beloved. Time to trust The Weaver.
