CALLED AND COMMISSIONED

CALLED AND COMMISSIONED
 
Ever see an elderly person looking bewildered in a shopping complex and wish there was a manager close by to help them? Ever spot someone in tears in your office and wish you had a counselor on staff? Ever know a neighbor whose life was so obviously out of control that you wished your preacher could share a couple of the insights with them that you heard in last Sunday's sermon?

From this point forward, consider yourself commissioned to do something in all these and similar situations.

There aren't store managers enough for all the frightened little children or bewildered elderly people who get into distress in a mall or shopping center. There aren't enough counselors to match with people who are in pain over bad news or strained relationships. And there aren't enough ordained clergy to go around for all the people who need to find meaning in their spiritual lives.

But where did we get the idea that it takes a professional to help someone? Professionals built the Titanic, while the ark was built by amateurs.

I know, for example, what the term "ordained clergy" means. But I'm not so sure you can find either the term or the concept in your Bible. Yes, Scripture talks about people with special gifts and ministries. But one of the texts that refers to such persons says their job is to use their abilities to equip the rest of us to be helpers - the biblical term is "work of ministry" - to one another (Ephesians 4:12).

The idea of leaving God's work in the hands of a few talented professionals just isn't biblical or practical. It turns faith into Sunday performances done by a few for the critique of the many. What became of the idea that every believer is a priest? That all of us are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God?

God surely needs more evangelists and musicians, pastors and deacons. But he needs more people who can make frustrated customers feel valued for their business or frightened patients feel cared for as persons. He longs for more school teachers and bank presidents, janitors and celebrities, teens and senior citizens who take the command to love their neighbors as themselves seriously.

God's call is sometimes to a new role in a new place. It is more often for us to find Christ-focused significance for our old tasks in familiar places for the sake of people we already know. "Don't be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you," Paul wrote. "Live and obey and love and believe right there" (1 Corinthians 7:17 MSG).

Until you are sure God has told you otherwise, consider yourself called and commissioned for the sake of the people and places you will encounter today. 

…..as seen in the Fax of Life by way of Cup O’Cheer (cheer316@sc.rr.com) and “Christian Voices” (christianvoices@att.net)