Let's Do Life Together

A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better than a steak with someone you hate. Proverbs 15:17

Michael is my middle son and he has a best friend, John. They enjoy playing together, shooting grackel birds with BB guns and just messing around. But when it gets close to dinner time, everything changes, they get serious. They want to eat together, and they won't take no for an answer. They don't really care what's on the dinner table, they just want to break bread together.

I've been in many Bible study groups where one common premise is "doing life together".  We often share a meal before opening our Bibles. There's just something about the conversation over food; it has a way of bringing us closer than just about anything else.

Paul told the church of Thessolonica that he cared so much for them that he not only shared the gospel with them, but he took the time to share his very own life with them (1Thess. 2:8). I can just see him now. Spreading the gospel like only Paul can, and then taking the time to sit and share a meal with those new believers. In first and second Thessalonians we see how he encouraged them, instructed them and shared his sufferings with them.

There's someone else in the Bible who took the time to share a meal with his new friends. He sought them out, expecting nothing in return, blessing them far beyond their wildest dreams. He brought them on journeys as He spread the gospel with His very presence. He not only broke bread with them, he broke bread for them, by the shedding of His blood. His name is Jesus, and He did that for you and me.

Feeling Useless?

I replied, "But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose." Isaiah 49:4

As a stay at home mom, I have said these very words, and more at times. Laundry never ends, dishes continue to pile, and I spend hours on meals that no one seems to like. Unless I get sick, what I do around the house goes virtually unnoticed.

But I know that God has a purpose for my life, and that purpose just may be the little ones to whom he has entrusted to my care. I have three sons, 4, 6,  and 10. Being a stay at home mom was not my life long dream, but I am one nonetheless.

Hudson is our oldest, and I'm convinced he is going to do something big in the field of science, something very important, of course.

The middle one, Michael, asks daily as his prayer request to be kind and compassionate, then adds, "Mom, what is compassionate again?" He knows it pleases God and makes others feel good, he's just not sure of what it really means. But that is a perfect picture of his heart, most of the time.

The little one, Luke, is funny and wants everyone to laugh. He is fought over amongst his classmates, and without even trying, seems to know how to make people feel comfortable.

Together, they will touch countless lives if I continue to do what seems meaningless. Only God knows how He will use them, but it's up to me to point them in His direction.

So you see, my work is not in vain, when looked at from this perspective. It's when we step back and look at things through God's eyes that we see the bigger picture. We will never see the picture the way He does, but that's ok. He's God and we are not.

"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world."
Josephine Billings