Humility Before God and Man

One of the things I began processing through in the last couple weeks of our summer adventure in Peru is the idea of humility before God and man.  It's no secret that Katie and I were surprised by the summer and what it ended up looking like.  We had very different ideas going in, and different hopes, and we ended up doing a lot of things that weren't much fun to say the least.  However, one of our goals going in had been to serve Inca Link's long-range goals in whatever way was best for them, and so as we got going that goal had to take precedence over the others.  We had been asked to work hard toward the physical completion of the children's home.  If that was how we were going to serve Inca Link, that's what we needed to do.

It goes beyond our goals of serving, however.  Regardless of our thoughts or preferences toward our job descriptions, we felt like serving to the full extent of our capacity was our sacred duty.  The Bible speaks about authority, and gives examples: even Jesus submitted to His parents (Luke 2:51).  After speaking with a centurion about authority, Jesus commends his great faith at recognizing Jesus' authority (Matthew 8).  The Bible also talks about humility, namely that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34 and 1 Peter 5:5).  Finally, Colossians 3:23 and Galatians 1:10 ties it all together for us to make it clear that we do our work for the Lord, not for men.  To do our daily manual labor on the children's home was service not just to our director, but to our Lord.

This past summer was challenging in many ways.  We had some conflicts and differences of values with the organization.  However, we came to learn that conflicts and disagreements don't necessarily reflect that anyone is wrong, merely that they are different.  Therefore, it was our duty before God to work as hard as we could, as well as we could, for our directors at Inca Link as if it were for the Lord directly.  It's a good life lesson for all of us.  Our labor is not for men, or for ourselves - it's for God, and He demands it all.  When you're working for the Lord, there's no room for laziness, low-quality work, or not finishing well.  I hope that Katie's and my work ethic over the summer - whether it was painting, ministering to the teams, ministering to the interns, or just sweeping the floor and doing dishes - was a reflection of how we felt about serving the Lord directly.  Let's all pray today that our labor looks to others as if we believe we are serving the living God Himself!