S223P5 – Notes on gratitude: just enough hands

Rom. 16:3-4

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their very lives for my life. To them not only do I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.

I have helped a lot of people move, and each experience is a little different, but there certainly are two distinct kinds of moving days.  One is the moving day which lasts an entire day or maybe more.  It is the one where almost no one shows up even if many have said they would. What ends up happening is there are not nearly enough hands for the work, and the work never seems to end.  Those are the moving days which have us laid up afterward icing our backs and popping pain pills like breath mints.  The other type of moving day is one which lasts only a few hours because the laborers arrive in droves and get the work done efficiently.  Instead of a moving day, it turns out to be just a moving morning or afternoon.  We are always thankful when moving day looks like that because no one wants to be overworked.

We have discussed praising God for the way He continually adds people to his kingdom, but there is one specific reason why we should be grateful for that.  Scripture tells us that there is much work to do, but the laborers are few [Luke 10:2].  It is like no one has shown up for moving day. What God does is He brings in new recruits to help the current laborers along.  There is a lot of work for us to do before Jesus returns, and some of it will be very difficult and dangerous.  Even though God will ask us to walk through those fires, we can be grateful that He has given us partners in labor to bear some of that load.  God will not ask us to tend to those fields beyond what we are capable of doing.  He will not exhaust and overwork us.  He will make sure there are enough hands to get the job done without his people breaking.

We can thank God that He shares the load of labor among all of his children.  We can thank him that laborers have come before us to plant seeds and water them.  We can thank him that He will bring laborers after us to continue tending to the fields until the harvest.  We do not have to worry about God treating us like some earthly bosses might do, expecting unrealistic hours or unrealistic results.  God knows our strengths, and He assigns us the work which fits us.  He is adding to his kingdom so that the gaps in the labor are filled and so that his children remain strong and refreshed.  We thank God for the work He gives us but also that the load is not too much to bear.  Father, thank You for the honor of allowing us to do your work and the grace of not giving us work beyond what we are capable of completing with You.