Those of you who know me know that I like gadgets…a lot. In fact those of you who know me know that is an understatement. I got my first PDA a number of years ago it was a palm100 pretty basic it only had 2 meg bytes of rom, probably could hold 500 or 600 addresses. A few years later I upgraded to the Palm M500 pictured here, it had 8 megabytes of ram 4 times as much and could also take up to a 32 mb sd card making it have 16 times more ram. I really liked how it stored addresses and appointments and even kept track of my mileage but I got tired of carrying it and a phone so eventually I upgraded my phone with a smart phone a Blackberry combining my phone and PDA. For awhile I have been thinking about getting a GPS unit and I had begun looking at them. I wanted one mainly so I would know which side of the river an address is on when I’m paged out in the middle of the night or during the day. But at 3:00am it takes awhile for my brain to start functioning and as I played with GPS units I couldn’t seem to find one that was easy enough to use while my brain was still coming on line.
While I was contemplating and still looking at GPS units I begin to see ads for the new Android phones, specifically the Motorola Droid and I knew my contract was coming due and I would be eligible for a new phone again. So I begin to do my research and I discovered that all Android based phones have turn by turn GPS. And I began to think well that would be handy only needing one thing instead of two. But then I discovered that the Android based phones allow you to speak the address and then it will give you turn by turn directions. Push a button, speak the address and viola the phone is directing me where I need to go. I knew then that my next phone was going to be an Android phone but which one to get.
Now I believe that the Android phones are really cool and they have a lot of neat features and applications, however I’m not ruled by what’s cool, functionality figures prime in my thinking and while I liked a lot of the features on my Blackberry I wasn’t entirely happy when I switched from my old Palm PDA to my Blackberry. I missed many of the Palms features especially its contacts and calendar and the seamless integration with the computer and the graffiti text entry. Granted the Palm has no color screen, no pictures, no bells and whistles so to speak but as an organizer I have not found its equal. So I spent a lot of time at the store looking at the Android phones. I had almost decided on the Motorola Droid when the Droid X came out. To cut to the chase I eventually went with the Droid X pictured here and despite all its bells and whistles and improvements over the Blackberry as a PDA I still find it lacking when compared to my old Palm. In fact while I don’t use my Palm anymore as you can see I haven’t ebayed it yet either.
Our society is quick to tell us that the next new thing is superior to the old one. We were told CD’s were superior to cassette tapes and vinyl albums, until you tried to go jogging and you only heard every other word to your song, and discovered the slightest scratch can make the CD unusable, and we were told DVD’s were superior to VHS, I never rented a VHS tape I couldn’t play, and now digital is better then analog, I never had any trouble with any of the stations until everything went digital, PBS sometimes comes in with no audio and sometimes I run across a station with audio and the picture isn’t moving. And now we are told Blue-Ray is better then DVD and they are beginning to come out with 3-D Blue-Ray players and 3-D televisions. I read an article about this new 3-D craze in a computer magazine and the author wrote that basically it is a gimmick because the brain processes everything in 3-D anyway, it’s called perspective and I learned about that in 7th grade art class. Granted 2D might not seem to pop off the screen at you, but do you really want Tara Thomas and Ron Steele popping off the screen at you? And besides what happens to the old stuff when we are finally convinced or forced to upgrade them.
This is my old weed-eater. It’s around 20 years old. They don’t make this style anymore and a couple of years ago it wasn’t running at all and so I bought a new one, I used it once and hated its style so much that I took it back. I took this one up to get it fixed. The guy told me I could buy a new one for at least what it would cost me to fix this one. I said fine you have any that are this style? “No, they don’t make them like that anymore.” I said then fix this one.
In a world where computers double in speed and memory capability every 6 months, we are constantly bombarded with the message new is better, you need to upgrade, replace, get with the times, and we can began to feel that perhaps our time has passed. As we get older we might begin to think well the younger ones, they are better equipped, they know more, they are wiser, more able to cope, deal, lead…and so we might start to think, “What do I have to offer? Maybe it’s time for me to go out to pasture.”
Well Pastor Paul has some words for us on that subject, and perhaps it seems a little strange to have them right here after we have gone through all the heavy tricky stuff of the previous 3 chapters, but I think this is a perfect place because after the previous 3 chapters we might be tempted to think, “what have I got to offer, I didn’t really grasp all of what Pastor Paul was writing about, maybe I just can’t get it so I’ll give up.” And Pastor Paul says this to encourage us as translated in “The Message” “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
There is no shame in who any of us are. There is no shame in what any of us do for a living. There is no shame that some of us are older. There is no shame that some of us are younger. There is no shame that some us have less “book smarts” then others. There is no shame in me being a pastor of a small church in a small town, in rural north eastern Iowa. Just because 1000’s of people don’t hear me preach every Sunday doesn’t mean that I haven’t done anything for God. It doesn’t mean that I don’t count. There is no shame in being just a mother, a father, a homemaker, a daycare provider, a farmer, a bus driver. There is no shame in being just a grandparent, a librarian, a store clerk, a nurse, a janitor, a secretary, a garbage collector. Just because no one here has gone off to preach the gospel in the heart of Africa doesn’t mean you haven’t done great works for the Lord. Just because your job is not glamorous, that you don’t affect the lives of 1000’s or even 100’s of people, maybe you only affect the lives of 2 people. Just because in the eyes of the world you are not superstar doesn’t mean that you don’t count that you don’t have anything to offer the Lord that the Lord is not pleased as punch with you.
You notice Pastor Paul doesn’t say to the Romans you worthless lazy Christians, why aren’t you out traveling the world preaching the gospel? Why aren’t you planting churches? Why aren’t you out getting arrested and beaten in the synagogues? Why aren’t you finding a more glamorous job instead of pumping septic tanks? No Pastor Paul says “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.”
God doesn’t want us to be “successful” people as the world defines it. We don’t need to be the CEO of a mega corporation, or teacher of the year, or even a pastor of a mega church. What we need, what God wants from us is to do everything to the best of our ability and do it for the Lord. So if you happen to be a custodian by trade then what Paul says you should do is to clean as if you are cleaning the mansions of heaven itself, do it as if you are cleaning the Lord’s house. If you are sandwich artist then make your sandwich as if you are making it for Jesus Himself, if you are a daycare worker look after the children as if they are the infant Jesus Himself. But it’s not just our jobs that we are to do for the Lord it’s our entire everyday life. You see some of us are retired, some of us are on disability and unable to work some of us may have been laid off so we are also to take our sleeping, our eating and our walking around life, that’s why I like how it is translated by “The Message” living sacrifices means that we are to take all of our lives every aspect of them. Sleeping, we are to sleep for the Lord, and to eat for our Lord and to walk around all for Him. We should take joy and pride in all that we do from the exciting to the most mundane. In short what each of us has to offer to the Lord is our complete self and the Lord will receive it with great joy, for we are His workmanship, His children, we have been made by Him in His image and purchased by the blood of His Son. We are immensely valuable to God and each and everyone of us has great and wonderful things to offer to Him, if we will simply allow Him to work in us, as it’s translated in “The Message” God will bring out the best in us and develop a well formed maturity. And so as God’s children and heirs with Christ we should never feel that we are past our prime that we are obsolete that we do not have anything to offer, never forget that you are God’s workmanship, He is transforming each of us into His good and perfect sons and daughters.
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