WHO ONE BECOMES OVER A LIFETIME IS EVERYTHING:
There are stages of ministry development that transpire so slowly as to almost defy notice.
One starts in Christian service as a ‘doer’- usually to meet another’s needs or perhaps doing another man’s deeds.
…maybe picking up where another left off.
Over time and usage, he becomes the personification of those doings. He may become quite good at it, ever growing into higher expressions of those functions and roles.
If he persists, and doesn’t allow himself through distraction and weakness to be drawn into a lesser self, he finds through his life, his own vision of Christ. And, if allowing himself to be broken and reshaped into that image, he finds he may then become more than the sum of his doings. New levels of life’s meanings begin to dawn. But let the reader be careful here, a vision of Christ that doesn’t bend and break oneself, is no Christ at all.
Through the bending and the breaking, the healing of life and being begin to glow with the caste of Christ’s reflection. His value is becoming more than what he did, does, or could ever do.
His ‘being’; excelling and exceeding any merit of his doings, impacts and flavours the world (or at least his allotment) beyond his reach or his time in it.
This one, looking behind himself at his family, understands he’s planted Kingdom seeds, for eternity’s sake, that will grow, in their own due time into a full harvest of righteousness.
They will grow into a full harvest of righteousness that he, they and others yet unborn will feed from in lives yet untold.