“It's a very desperate situation and they're doing God's work, fighting everything they can.”
An elected official defended the indefensible by characterizing border patrol agents riding horses, using whips and words in the execution of their duty, as “doing God’s work.” One of these “workers of God” was caught on camera spewing vitriol as he wielded his scourge upon the backs of men and women, some carrying food to their children. He screamed, “This is why your country's sh*t because you use your women for this."
I think other quotes on God’s work deserve equal consideration like that of Missionary James Hudson Taylor:
“God’s work is not man working for God; it is God’s own work, though often wrought through man’s hands.” Hudson Taylor
Through Taylor’s life and hands—51 years enduring arrests, insults, slander and poverty—the “finished work of Christ” was spread throughout China. Compared to the work of Christ on the cross, Taylor said he did not consider his work a sacrifice.
Any word on God’s work should include God’s Son:
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. John 4:34
So essential was finishing the work that God purposed Christ, Jesus liken His work to food, vital to His life and mission: to die so others may live. And what was that finished work that sustained the Son of God and drove men like Hudson Taylor?
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
No word about God’s work (and the job requirements that comes with it) would be complete without hearing from God himself:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.? Michah 6:8
Requirement #1: Justice. Mishpat is the word. That which is right in how we must treat others is a requisite to being a just child, church, community or country. Feeding hungry, homeless children is the right thing to do. Moral code, not zip code, is the determinate of justice. Any abettor to its impediment is an accessory to a crime.
Justice is possible. The Ministry City Church in Del Rio provided more than 2,000 sandwiches in four days for migrants at the requests of U.S. border patrol who rode horses up on children.
Requirement #2: Mercy. Chesed (lovingkindness) is the word. It is more than being loving or being kind. It is an amalgam of the virtues that goes above being either of those two virtues alone. It means giving oneself fully, with passion and courage. Catherine McAuley, an Irish Catholic laywoman recognized the many needs of people who were economically poor in early nineteenth-century Ireland and determined that she and women like her could make a courageous difference.
Spending her inheritance, she opened the first House of Mercy in Dublin, Ireland in 1827. That work of mercy continues today in Haiti, providing water conservation plants and agriculture development to the island nation. You can curse the darkness or be a candle and let mercy shine where it will.
Requirement #3: Humility. The word is tsana. It’s one thing to submit oneself to another with a hint of pride and self-recognition. But to submit totally to God without stealing a little credit for yourself is more powerful. To walk humbly is to make submission to God a lifestyle rather than an infrequent, strategic service event for personal gain is another. Doing what God ask you to do—without special acknowledgment—brings with it, its own recognition and blessing when God gets the glory.
Ask the widow with two mites. Her way of giving (giving all without “all that”) was noted by Christ in His last teaching opportunity with his disciples (Mark 12:41). The anonymous woman is immortalized as the way to live and give.
As you consider doing “God’s good work”, think on Micah 6:8 and the actions of the widow and her mites. Some “two-cents” are mightier than the vitriolic words of vile men with whips, and reins, and horses.
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