Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 347 · December 13
Not In Vain
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
A stack of chairs, a hall that smells of coffee and floor polish, one person left to put the tables away at half past nine. That is where the great chapter on resurrection lands: on a Tuesday night, with the chairs.
Therefore is doing real work in that sentence. Everything Paul has said about the trumpet and the changed body arrives here, at labour, and then a boundary is drawn around the promise. Your labour is not in vain in the Lord. Those last three words are the whole guarantee. Nothing here promises that the project will grow, that the effort will be noticed, or that you will live to see any of it work. What is promised is that it will not be lost, because the one it was done for is alive and does not mislay things.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 347 is God Goes Before and Fights (Deuteronomy 1:30).