Our reading today is  2 Corinthians 6-8, and I’m calling the episode “Hop To.”

We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says:

“In an acceptable time I have heard you,
And in the day of salvation I have helped you.”

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

How marvelous! God calls us to work with Him! As God, He certainly does not need our help. God created the universe without us. Is there any doubt that anything He wants to do can be done without our assistance? Why does He invite us to work with Him? I think He does it for our benefit. 

When my boys were young, I would sometimes ask them to “help” me do work around the house. When they were very young they would “help” mow the lawn. When I would change the oil in the cars, I would ask them to hand me tools. Today, all three of my boys have the confidence to work with their hands to do whatever they decide to tackle. Steven, my middle son, recently thanked me for teaching him this skill. He works as a finance manager at a local car dealership, so working with his hands is not required by his job. He was given a new desk for his office, and instead of waiting for his employer to hire someone to assemble the desk, he put it together himself. His colleagues marveled that he was able to do it on his own! But he needed the desk, so he put it together. In his mind, it was no big deal. But they said, “I could never do that.” So he thanked me for teaching him to work with his hands.

In my own life, my dad taught me the same lesson. My dad was a bricklayer. He worked with his hands from a very young age. He could do just about anything. I started helping him on bricklaying jobs when I was about ten years old. I would stack bricks, mix cement, clean his tools, whatever he asked me to do. I did that off and on until high school, when I got a summer job as a lifeguard. When I was about eighteen and needed to earn more money, I got a summer job with the company my dad worked for so that I would have enough money that I would not have to work during the college school year. I paid for my own books, I paid the school fees, I had gas money, and whatever I needed. One day on the job, my dad said to me, “I learned a long time ago that when the boss asks you if you can do something say, ‘Yes!’, whether you know how to do it or not. You can always figure out how to do it later. Just tell him, ‘Yes’, and then go figure it out.” 

My dad built a very good life for himself using that approach, my business is in it’s thirty-third year thanks to that mind-set, and I have passed it along to my boys. 

And now, God has called us to work with Him. You’ll remember what Paul said in chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians, verse 20: “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” An ambassador is the representative of the one who sends him. His/her entire mission is to fulfill the agenda, the mission of the person or organization or organization for whom he/she is working. Any authority the ambassador has is *delegated* to him by his superior. 

And this, as Paul said in verse 20, is the relationship we have been called to. What a privilege and responsibility! We are workers together with God. 

Time to get busy! Hop to!

Bible translation used in today’s episode: Ch. 6 NIRV; Ch. 7-8 NIV

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