MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS
“I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” John 9:4
Tomorrow we close on the buying of the new Bethesda Community that will house disciples. At the same time we hear across the world that Syrian children and others were burned by chemical warfare, an Egyptian church was bombed with people worshipping inside and a famine is brewing in Africa. You can either run and hide, close the curtains or be disciples. Christ came with a mandate and in turn he gave us the same. Do you join with him in working the works of God? Candles were made to burn and built for light.
The night comes my friends and the great ticking clock never stops.
McClarans says “He that can say, as Jesus Christ did say: ‘My meat’-the refreshment of my nature, the necessary sustenance of my being-’is to do the will of my Father’; that man, and that man alone, feels no pressure. When ‘I will’ and ‘I choose’ coincide, like two of Euclid’s triangles atop of one another, line for line and angle for angle, then comes liberty into the life. He that can say, ‘Thy law is within my heart,’ that is the Christlike, the free, the happy man.” There is nothing like being free yet having purpose. If we don’t watch out we lose our perspective on why we are in existence. We need to make a business of it. Matthew Henry says, “Shall we be willing to be loose, when Christ was willing to be bound? Christ, having laid himself under obligations to do his work, laid out himself with the utmost vigor and industry in his work. He worked the works he had to do; did ergazesthai ta erga—made a business of that which was his business. It is not enough to look at our work, and talk over it, but we must work it. Work while we have opportunity – The time of our life is our day, in which it concerns us to do the work of the day. Day-time is the proper season for work (Ps. 104:22, 23); during the day of life we must be busy, not waste day-time, nor play by day-light; it will be time enough to rest when our day is done, for it is but a day.”
In this Passion Week Let your light shine. What were candles made for but to burn?