Every Day is an Offering

 

I came across a fun conversation that brought back sweet memories. It was written when the whole family was in Oklahoma, living in and working on a hideously broken and unfinished house. Leon was still in the Portland area making money and looking for a job in Oklahoma. This is it:

  The first thing that I said to Havilah when she came home from work was,

"Havilah, we got the bathroom sink installed!"

'Really! I'm gonna wash my hands right away!'

Cheerful comments and exultant cleanliness followed us to the end of that day, wherein we ate buckets of popcorn, talked to Papa on the phone, and watched a movie.

Naphti sighed gleefully, "I love being able to wash my hands!"

That was but one of the many blissful moments of yesterday. Included in the general ecstasy of being able to wash our hands, was the fact that the bathtub area had been tiled and we would soon be able to bathe properly.

  Now Havilah is going in to get Nelinha up from her nap.

"Haha awaits me" says Havilah. "I hope that she will wake up with her usual contented, merry satisfaction with the world".

 We suffered, worked and strove together in that first house. We made it beautiful and lived in it for 3 years. We had many dances, fun, and meaningful worship times with our new Oklahoma friends in that house. We practiced gardening until almost the entire back and side yard were planted in vegetables. Then, suddenly, it seemed, we sold it and moved into another ugly house to do it again.

It makes me cry sometimes when I think of it. All of us working so many long hours, for what? Was it for the house? Was it all a waste now that the house is gone?

That would be true without the Lord. In reality we all dedicated every day to His glory. We worked as unto the Lord. The struggles and fights, the cooperation and hard learning were all just us worshiping God and Him sanctifying us.

All those beautiful wood cabinets that we built by hand and left behind, did we lose those? I don't think so. We put our hands to a task and did it well. That was God's will, it says so in the bible. It's all eternal. We pleased God with the excellence of the work and that will last forever.

I came across something that Leon wrote to us the day before we drove away from our house in the Portland area heading for Bartlesville, OK. Leon writes:

"With the Day of Arrival tasks already complete, we are well on our way into the meat and potatoes of this project of moving to Oklahoma. I believe in all of your abilities to pull together to make this happen with joy and love.

Remember, this effort is to establish a launch pad from which we can all be more free to fulfill our missions together into this broken world for the time we have been given." -Papa

He was right about the purpose of our work together. Anything is a vain waste of time if our focus is not on glorifying Christ.

If it is a worship to God it is eternal. We don't want these things that we work at to become idols. We want to have a mindset of serving and loving God in every work of our hands. In so doing we store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal.