A few weeks after I started my job my boss came up to me and thanked me for being so efficient. She appreciated my organizational skills (No, seriously! You guys that know me are probably ROTFL, but at work I'm actually organized.) taking initiative, but most of all seeing what needed to be done and just doing it. Of course, I took it all with a grain of salt. She had been running the clinic all by her self with a little help from different family members. I was the first real full time employee she hired, so having someone else to do the daily office tasks was a huge weight off her shoulders. I figured she would say that about anyone at that point. Only later did I look back on past jobs and past experiences and see that, well, maybe I was doing a good job.
We've all been there... that co-worker who never seems to do anything unless they are told. The guy that doesn't recognize the obvious until you point it out.
"Those cups over there are dirty, maybe you could put them in the sink?"
"Oh. right. Sorry man."
Part of being a good employee is seeing what's wrong or out of place and fixing it. It's knowing what needs to be done and not having to be told. We see the problem, we seek a solution. It's part of being a good person. It's seeing the elderly woman staring at her flat tire and stopping to put the spare on for her. It's helping push that stalled car off the road and out of harms way. It's giving your time and resources to help those in need. For some of us it comes naturally, and to others it takes a lot of effort. Maybe that's why God took the time to spell it out for the people of Israel.
We just finished Leviticus in our Bible in a Year plan. Anyone who has read that book knows it is filled with all kinds of weird laws that make no sense. Boiling goats, mixing fibers in a garment, stoning your children... Things that honestly do not make sense in our day and age. While they were applicable to the Israelites in that time, they don't apply to us, right? Jesus came to do away with the Law, so it doesn't matter, we can just ignore those parts of the Bible because they are outdated... wellllll, not so fast. A lot of the Laws found in the Hebrew bible are there to govern the interactions of not only the people with God, but the people with each other. Jesus even tells us that the heart of the Law is love. Love for God, and love for our fellow man. We are free from the burden of having to fulfill the law in order to find salvation, but we are not free from our obligations to love God and others. When we look at the Law we find laws about how owners are to treat slaves. Laws about righting wrongs between neighbors. There are even laws about taking care of the less fortunate. For me, the question isn't why should we pay attention to these old statutes, but why aren't we? Another question is, why do we even need laws about how to treat others? The answer is quite honestly uncomfortable. We are inherently selfish. We want to keep what's ours. And why not? We earned it, we worked hard for it. Why should I care about the poor and homeless? If I started giving stuff away I might end up like them. The government is trying to take my money away so that they can fund some program I never agreed to that pays these people to be lazy! Not me, no thank you. If we believe that Scripture is truly alive, the very Word of God for His people, then we have to accept that what we have isn't ours. We only have what we have because of God's blessings, so that we might be a blessing to others.
Some of us, I mean us because I count myself among those I'm talking to, give to charities or to our churches and think that is enough. I did until just recently. I figured if I give money so that these organizations can help others I'm doing my part. Then I realized, what I'm really doing is paying someone else to do the work for me. To show love on my behalf. I taking the easy way out of loving my neighbor. I'm buying peace of mind that allows me to say I did what Jesus asked me to. I see the need, I recognize the problem, then outsource the solution. James tells us that true religion is taking care of the poor, widows, orphans. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean paying others to do it for us. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with giving to charitable organizations. I certainly don't have a problem with giving to religious institutions either. Many of these groups do great work and help a lot of people, but if the depth of your compassion for your fellow man stops at dropping a few extra bucks in a plate, or putting a check in the mail a couple of times a year... I think you need to re-evaluate some things. Yes, it is easier to just let someone else do it for us, but following Jesus is not meant to be easy. We are called to be the workers in the Kingdom. I hope that someday our Boss will tell us we did a great job.
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