itsawonderfilledlife

In our society today (and I expect in any society, at any time in history) there is an unwritten hierarchy of jobs and professions.

Of course the job of a doctor is more essential to our society than that of a garbage collector … until those garbage collectors go on strike, and garbage builds up in the streets, and rats are present in large numbers in our cities, and diseases begin to fun rampant.

Or that of a school administrator is more important than that of a school’s administrative assistant … what am I saying, everyone knows that those who work in the front offices of schools are the ones who really run the schools 😉 .

C.S. Lewis said,
“I reject at one and idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right spiritual and meritorious-as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and boot lacks (shoe shiners).

… The work of Beethoven and the work of a charwoman (cleaning woman) become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly ‘as to the Lord,’ ”
(The Weight of Glory)

What is it that makes us prioritize one person’s profession over that of another? What is it that makes one person’s job ‘essential’ and another simply supplementary to that more important role?

It makes me think of the scripture from 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 :

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Each person has a job, like each part of our body has a role to play. One only needs to stub their toe, a part often ignored, to realize how very important that toe is to our balance and our walk. The key is not the value of one profession or job over another, the key is who we are doing the job for, and the effort we are investing in the accomplishing of it.

As I was writing this post, I was listening to Chuck Swindoll speaking on Joshua. He spoke of years ago watching a television broadcast of a Presidential address from Ronald Reagan and how he heard little of what the President said, because he was trying to make out the words on a brass plaque on the President’s desk. The next day his secretary was able to contact the White House and uncover the words :

“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go
if he does not mind who gets the credit.”
(Charles Edward Montague, English novelist and essayist)

Although those words deliver a good message, I would choose to re-write it, integrating into it the words of C. S. Lewis, as follows:

“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go
if he will offer it to God, doing it all humbly ‘as to the Lord.”

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