Daily Manna · Day 138 · May 18
Work Remembered
“For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.”
After the church dinner is over, who thanks the woman who set out the chairs?
Somebody sat in a hospital chair for six hours while the family who got the phone calls were still stuck in traffic. Somebody carried a casserole across a doorstep in a foil pan, still warm, and handed it over without saying much. There is a woman in a care home with exactly one visitor, and it is not her son. None of this is written down anywhere.
Hebrews 6 was written to believers worn so thin that they were in danger of walking away. The chapter has just given them a severe warning. Then it turns: "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you." The reason for this confidence is not how strong they are. It is who God is: "For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love." God remembers because He is just. It would be wrong for Him to lose track of what you did in love, and He never does what is wrong. Then look at the end of the verse: "ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister." The first part looks back, and the second part looks at today. God is not writing a farewell speech for a career that is over. He is watching what you are doing this week.
So pray it like this. Father, You saw the chair and the pan and the drive over. I did not do it to be seen, and yet I have been keeping count. Take the counting off me. Where it has gone unthanked, let that be enough, because You are just and You have not forgotten it. Keep me at it tomorrow, unrecorded, for the people who cannot pay it back. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 138 is Settled on Their Lees (Zephaniah 1:12).