Daily Manna · Day 278 · October 5
His Workmanship
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Paul says something surprising in today's verse: the good works you will do were prepared before you were.
He has just spent nine verses taking away everything you might add to your own rescue. You were "dead in trespasses and sins." God "quickened" you, which means He made you alive. Paul says "by grace are ye saved," and it is "not of works, lest any man should boast." Then he calls us God's "workmanship," a word for something carefully made, and puts works straight back into the sentence in a different place. These are works God laid out ahead of time, "which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." Paul says "walk," the word for moving along a road you are already on. Earning has no part in it.
That makes the usual question the wrong one. Asking what to do with our lives usually means looking for some other road with a bigger stage. The harder question is closer to home: what has God already laid along today? Think of the drive to work, the shift, the child with the fractions homework, the neighbour who talks too long at the gate. How many of those did you file away this morning as interruptions?
Do not answer yet. Put this down and sit still for two minutes without saying anything. The God who made you also prepared the road, and what you meet on it today is part of His work.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 278 is Let Him Glory (Jeremiah 9:24).