Late summer e-Devotion from Bob Dannals

Friday, August 24

 

"Back to the Salt Mine"

As if an internal clock ticks during the final days of vacation and the summer break, we are prompted by the “back to” messages of school, work, and routine. For Christians this doesn’t have to be a reluctant Jonah-like disdain for the work we’ve been given to do.

The most important thing we do is to show up with faithfulness, willingness, and encouragement. According to the scriptures, we don’t need to be certain or the best. We don’t have to perform or prove ourselves. According to the stories of significant saints, we don’t even have to want to be there. All of these would be significant if the restoration of the world were up to us!

In addition to faithfully showing up, we are also to receive and appropriate God’s vision of love and justice in our context — to recall the biblical salt mine and be reminded that Christ is calling each of us to be “salty” and press ourselves into the marrow of our society. What distinguished Jonah in Ninevah was not his reluctance but his vision of what God was doing through him for that city.

As the fall calendar gets filled up we have the outstanding privilege of breaking through the mundane of routine and realize how each of us can be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” In the journey may we cast our individual dreams and needs into the larger mission of the church — of connecting and engaging ourselves in worship, prayer, and study, of generosity and service so that we can be of good use to one another and to those beyond our parish campuses.