When a servant comes in from plowing or taking care of sheep, does his master say, ‘Come in and eat with me’? No, he says, ‘Prepare my meal, put on your apron, and serve me while I eat. Then you can eat later.’ And does the master thank the servant for doing what he was told to do? Of course not. In the same way, when you obey Me you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants who have simply done our duty.’
Luke 17:7-10 NLT
Duty is not a bad word. Jesus is talking about it in the above passage. In fact, above He shows that duty is the appropriate motive for serving a superior. I’ve waged a war against guilt-driven decisions in my life, but guilt and duty aren’t the same thing: duty involves the things that are truly my responsibility, while guilt (both a noun and verb, incidentally) can be misapplied.
I’ve also been thinking about the parable of the servants, tasked with managing various amounts of money. Read it here.
It’s culturally normal to accommodate doubt in the name of grace. But in this parable, we see the consequences: what the third servant called “fear”, the master called “wicked and slothful” (lazy). We are expected to not only return the initial investment we began with, but to multiply it! This is energizing to me. It’s proportional to what I start with: the master wasn’t expecting a one-talent investment to result in a five-talent gain. But it could have, had the servant given appropriate effort. He’d never know what he could have had because he buried his talent in the ground where it would be “safe.” There’s a lengthy and wonderful conversation to be had about the principle of ‘to whom much is given, much is expected’ (Luke 12:48) and its societal implications. A return is expected because the Father knows what’s possible. He knows the potential I have to creatively discover ways to create returns on His investment in me.
This website is one of those things. It’s a fun way for me to share a tiny sampling of the random things I think about and learn in a month. Over time it will accumulate a thorough and easy-to-navigate assortment of random information! My favorite!
My dad’s parents passed away last month, within a week of each other. I loved them dearly, and am grateful for their prayers and cheerful presence. They are fully alive with the Lord, each other, their parents, and their son Matt, who they terribly missed. Here, they live on in countless photos, memories, and the faces of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The Hodgson-Duran genes run strong. As my grandpa proudly celebrated, and my Uncle Matt memorialized with a handmade wooden sign, “You’ll find Duran in the middle of the word Endurance”!
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5 ESV