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.”
Picture the steps of a church on a winter morning. Before anyone arrives, one man has cleared them with a shovel, as he has on every snowy morning for years. By the end of the service fresh snow covers them again, and hardly anyone remembers they were ever clear.
That is the kind of work where Paul's great chapter on the resurrection lands. "Therefore" carries real weight here, because everything Paul has said about the trumpet and the changed body comes down to keeping on with the work. Then he draws a line around the promise: "your labour is not in vain in the Lord." The words "in the Lord" hold the whole guarantee. The work may not grow, nobody may notice it, and you may not live to see it bear fruit, yet none of it will be lost, because the Lord you did it for is alive and keeps everything done for Him. So pick up the shovel again.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 347 is God Goes Before and Fights (Deuteronomy 1:30).