The rector of a Jesuit seminary, speaking recently before an annual conference representing nearly 38,000 priests and brothers in the United States, declared, "We need to be doing things worth giving a life for."
This is a tremendous challenge, one that calls for the ultimate in personal commitment and sacrifice. Should not this charge be particularly applicable to the Seventh-day Adventist ministry today?
Let us face the question squarely, each in his own heart. How important and significant does our work appear to us? Do we conduct it in such a way as to reflect its awesome character?
What about the results? Is it really helping some soul to the kingdom? Is it doing something vital to hasten the coming of Jesus?
Did your sermon last Sabbath reflect the zeal and earnestness that the times and the needs demand? And did it bring definite encouragement and nourishment to the congregation? Did something positive really happen in the hearts of those who listened?
And the prayer meetings—are they conducted in such a way as to indicate that it makes a difference whether the people attend or not? Do the parishioners see in them the result of earnest, personal prayer preparation and genuine concern?
What about the evangelistic messages? Are they preached as though we realize that there are souls, not statistics, in the audience wavering between life and death?
To restate the initial question—Is what we are doing really important? In the mind of God, it is very important. It was important enough to bring Christ down to this earth to pour out His life in service, and then to die. But how important is it to us? Jesus said, "I must be about my Father's business." "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." Do we reflect the same spirit?
Bruce Barton in his well-known book, The Man Nobody Knows, says of Jesus that anyone who saw Him knew that here was a man who had set His spiritual house in order and knew what He was about. Can this be said of us?
If in examining our program, sermons, committee meetings, calls, missionary efforts, we discover that it all doesn't mean very much, that it is little more than drudgery in keeping the wheels turning, then some renewal is in order. Somewhere along the line we have lost something great. Surely there was a time in our ministry when things were different, when our hearts burned with a heavenly zeal.
Pray, then, for a new vision of the greatness of our cause. Return to Bethel. Dig again the wells of Abraham. Renew the covenant at Shechem. Rebuild the broken-down altars on Carmel. Pause again in the upper room. Then go forth with a burning zeal to see the work accomplished, the task completed, and our Lord's return hastened.
This will be so if we really believe our work to be important—even "worth giving a life for."
O.M.B.
