Pard
Member
This is something I have been thinking upon. I have not yet brought it before God, I don't know why, probably some silly notion that I ought to get a head around an idea before I go to God with it, when in truth my head around an idea has nothing to do with when I should approach God, nor should I even bother getting my head around something because only God can help us understand the nature of things.
Anyways! It has been on my heart and mind, of late, to wonder about the other Christians in the NT, the "silent Christians". We only read the letters and the stories of the apostles as they preached TO these "silent Christians", but we never hear or even get a grasp of who these people are.
I just finished reading "Crazy Love" and when I walked away from it I get this terrible guilt that I was going to school to be a lawyer when I really ought to just give that money for school to some homeless guy and then jump on the next plane to Kenya. Well, I know that may be a little extreme, but then this get me to thinking about the other Christians in the NT. We see the preachers and the missionaries and the teachers, but we never see the students, the receivers of these Words. Now I know we don't see them because their story isn't really important to our salvation, to our growth and to our knowledge, but still, it serves as a reminder and as a point of ease of heart when we look at them, because surely their entire community didn't decide to get up, throw down their tools, and become missionaries in turn.
They helped people around them, we see this because Paul writes about it. But then we have to assume that they got their money from somewhere, right? That somewhere must be a job. So surely these people are workers, doers, just like the right of us. That's reassuring to me. They were just regular Joes but they had salvation. They were just workers, business men, farmers, but they had salvation just as much as Paul or Peter or John. They were justified, not by their occupation, but by their faith. They didn't need to carry their crosses clear across the Middle East and into western Europe! They carried their cross from their house down to the corner store, out to the fields, into the building of their work, and back home again each night!
Good news huh?!
Anyways! It has been on my heart and mind, of late, to wonder about the other Christians in the NT, the "silent Christians". We only read the letters and the stories of the apostles as they preached TO these "silent Christians", but we never hear or even get a grasp of who these people are.
I just finished reading "Crazy Love" and when I walked away from it I get this terrible guilt that I was going to school to be a lawyer when I really ought to just give that money for school to some homeless guy and then jump on the next plane to Kenya. Well, I know that may be a little extreme, but then this get me to thinking about the other Christians in the NT. We see the preachers and the missionaries and the teachers, but we never see the students, the receivers of these Words. Now I know we don't see them because their story isn't really important to our salvation, to our growth and to our knowledge, but still, it serves as a reminder and as a point of ease of heart when we look at them, because surely their entire community didn't decide to get up, throw down their tools, and become missionaries in turn.
They helped people around them, we see this because Paul writes about it. But then we have to assume that they got their money from somewhere, right? That somewhere must be a job. So surely these people are workers, doers, just like the right of us. That's reassuring to me. They were just regular Joes but they had salvation. They were just workers, business men, farmers, but they had salvation just as much as Paul or Peter or John. They were justified, not by their occupation, but by their faith. They didn't need to carry their crosses clear across the Middle East and into western Europe! They carried their cross from their house down to the corner store, out to the fields, into the building of their work, and back home again each night!
Good news huh?!