useless

1 Corinthians 15

58 So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.

Always work enthusiastically for the Lord,

for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.

Paul is wrapping things up in his first letter to the followers of Jesus in Corinth.

He's telling them to be strong & work hard for the Lord.

Then he says something that just jumps off the page,

at least it does for me...

...nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.

How many of us feel useless a lot of the time?

How many of us just feel like we're passing from one day to the next, being & doing stuff that doesn't feel it's meaning a whole lot to anyone, or to ourselves?

How many of us feel like we're just spittin' in the wind?

How many of us feel like we don't really matter in the grand scheme of things?

Paul says that even though it may feel like it, if we are living our lives in surrender to the Lord, as His servants, then who & what we are & do is NEVER of no consequence.

How does that make you feel?

Can we really believe that?

Could that possibly be the truth?

If we believe that the Bible is God speaking to us, the yardstick by which we measure everything, then I guess we have to believe what Paul says here is true.

Remember that Paul was in prison a good chunk of the time he was in ministry as a major voice for people who follow Jesus.

Remember that being in prison back then held a LOT of stigma.

We get the feeling that Paul was pretty embarrassed to be in prison.

Nor was being in prison a Club Med or Sandals experience.

Paul busied himself while in prison, writing letters to the various groups of followers of Jesus in various cities.

He was just writing these letters to help these Jesus followers from going off the cliff.

I doubt he thought he was writing some of the major pillars of writings that would become the New Testament.

He was just writing to people he loved, trying to give them the best thinking he could about what it means to follow Jesus.

He probably thought of these writings as just letters to friends, not major tenets of thought & reasoning.

Now, we may not think it feasible to compare ourselves to Paul.

But if what he says here is true,

as we go about our lives each day with Jesus inside us,

connecting with people around us on all different levels,

then who we are & what we do is of consequence,

that there is a ripple effect to our lives,

in the way that who & what we are & do touches those who are in direct contact with us,

who then come in contact with other people,

and those people come in contact with others,

and on & on it goes.

Think about that today...