Every Day Tasks = Quiet Acts of Love
Wednesday’s Verse:
From Colossians 3:23-24 ESV
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. You are serving the Lord Christ.”
Most of life takes place away from the spotlight. We fold laundry. We balance a slightly lopsided table by folding a piece of paper under one leg. We clean out our email inbox even though it fills up day after day. These are seemingly small acts that are forgotten all too quickly.
Jesus spent thirty years living quietly. He probably helped His mother fold laundry. During his younger years, there weren’t throngs of people praising Him. He didn’t preach or perform miracles. Our Lord was a humble and faithful day-in and day-out worker in Nazareth. The Son of God swung a hammer, swept floors, and learned a trade. He sanctified the commonplace by entering into it.
Because you are His, your ordinary work is not vain. It is woven into His own service. When you patch a tire, or patch a kid’s scraped knee, or scrub a dish, or sign your name to a form, you are not just checking a chore off your list. You are embodying the calling God has given you today. He is exalting Himself in the plain and the unseen.
The paycheck will be small (if there is one), and the thanks smaller still. But the Lord notices. He notices and, more than that, He has promised an inheritance that will never fade. Christ has already earned it. So you can go to work with a calm heart, knowing your labor in Him is not in vain.
Ask that He would form your everyday tasks into quiet acts of love, and that He would keep your eyes on the One you really serve.
A Prayer for Today:
Heavenly Father, thank You for sanctifying the ordinary by the thirty quiet years of Your Son. Let the work of our hands this day—seen or unseen—be joined to His perfect service. Keep us from trusting in applause or paycheck, and fix our eyes on the inheritance already won for us by Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Luther’s Morning Prayer:
I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You. For into Your hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.
The photo above was licensed through Unsplash+