“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve each other with no matter reward every of you has obtained. Whoever speaks should achieve this as one talking the very phrases of God; whoever serves should achieve this with the power that God provides, that God could also be glorified in all issues by Jesus Christ.”
After I learn that sentence, I used to be reminded of Brother Lawrence, of the ebook The Observe of the Presence of God fame. Brother Lawrence was a 17th century Carmelite monk, a layman who devoted his life to God. He labored most of his life within the monastery kitchen, however his religious knowledge is timeless. He believed that even the most typical enterprise of life was a medium for God’s love, and that having the appropriate motivation is the important thing to working and residing a sanctified life. He wrote, “neither is it needful that we should always have nice issues to do…. We are able to do little issues for God; I flip the cake that’s frying on the pan for love of him, and that accomplished, if there may be nothing else to name me, I prostrate myself in worship earlier than him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It’s sufficient for me to select up however a straw from the bottom for the love of God.”
Our love of God is our motivation, whether or not we communicate or serve, work or weep. The keystone of all we do is to do it for the love of God; the muse of all we’re is the love of God. “No matter you do, put your complete coronary heart and soul into it, as into work accomplished for God, and never merely for males” (Col. 3:23).
The Very Rev. Sherry Black is a second-career Episcopal priest, and has been a full-time hospital chaplain for ten years. She additionally serves a small mission church as priest-in-charge, and is dean of her deanery.
The Church of Eire
St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Lake Charles, Louisiana
