Thoughts for another day

Aug. 21, 2013.

Today's verse: John 6:27. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  (NRSV – copyright acknowledged)

(Pls. read the above before you read further.  Thanks)

We all work for something or the other and most will agree that we work for our livelihood and for the upkeep of our families and our dependants.  It’s natural to work for things that concern us in our living and to fulfill them.  But, there’re many who work for riches that are far, far more than that which they need to be content with. 

It’s certainly right to be concerned with work that actually puts food on our plates and other things which we need.  But slowly and rather unthinkingly, we start working on what I call unnecessary and ‘spurious’ things: things that only hold economic value but really cause no benefit to us and are carcinogenic to our spiritual wellbeing.  Usually this is triggered by what we see our friends having.  If they have a three bed-roomed apartment, we too want it; if they possess a Mercedes Benz, we too want that; and so on.  The process of amassing these things gets us into what is called ‘busy-ness’.  You become so busy harnessing these ‘spurious’ things that your whole attention moves from value based things like your health or your family, etc and even God.  I’ve seen people who don’t even go to church once a week yet, during a church fund drive, make their presence felt right in the center of the action and pledge a huge amount so it be known they’re generous and get much recognition from even the pastor of the church, who rather than admonishing them for their lack of presence at church services, praise them for their generosity, which though right, isn’t really the thing that will grant them knowledge of God to their being saved.

Our Scripture today, gives us the clarion call about the right thing to do: work for food that is for eternal life.  It means we need to get off the ‘busy-ness’ seat which can only give us money and more money and get on to the spiritually nourishing bandwagon, wherein we work for the welfare of the people, particularly in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It’s time we did out bit for the body of Christ, the church and that too selflessly without expecting any title, or reward or even recognition for that matter; doing the work as doing it for the Lord and in that will we gather treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust can reach.