God’s plan for public services

 

All photos are courtesy of Unsplash

Today’s suggested Bible reading - Mark 10:28-52

The Lord Jesus really shook people up, particularly his disciples, with his teaching. I can only imagine the shocked looks on their faces when he announced that for anyone to be great in his Government, they would need to serve everybody, v44.

 

How different to the way this world operates! Power goes to people’s heads. When they get important jobs, they want to be recognised for their status. There are certain things that they don’t do anymore. Some privileges go with power. 

 

It is so different, or it should be, in the world of the Christian. The Lord Jesus was teaching that only humble people are really great. Only people who serve others can be recognised as important, v43, 44. I am not sure about you, but I know that this teaching is not the natural way that I think. So, I need to pray and ask for the Lord’s help to understand this teaching. I also need His help so that my behaviour is ‘in line’ with the teaching.

 

I wonder how this teaching should affect how I behave. Will I be more interested in what I can do to help others from now on, Phil 2:4? Would I be happy to work hard if it saved another person the effort? Are there any jobs that I think are beneath me that really I should do for the Lord Jesus?

 

One of the great things about this truth is that the Lord Jesus is not asking us to do something He will not do. He came to serve and not to be served, v45. The biggest proof was His death. He laid down His life to pay for my salvation. Is there anything that I would not do for Him? 

Measuring by the right standard

All photos courtesy of Unsplash

In the process of sorting through some items last week I came across some unusual rulers. At a cursory glance, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary, but a closer look reveals two lines of 12 inches on the top face. Both begin at the same mark, but finish in different positions.

Someone I know tried making a box with the help of one of these rulers. He took a tape measure and carefully marked the cutting position of one side then used the ruler to mark out another. When all was done, the box was screwed together, but the lid didn’t fit — the box was out of square. Taking the tape measure to each of the sides, the discrepancy was soon discovered but it took a little longer to realise it was because he had used a ruler with a different inch.

My rulers were from grandpa. He was the sort of person who shined his shoes every day before going to work and oiled and polished his tools once a week. He was able to craft things out of wood near perfect because he was a ‘patternmaker’. Whilst much of this is done today with the help of computers, years ago, when a manufacturer needed a metal object to be reproduced a large number of times, a mould would be used and this was made from a ‘pattern’. One complication with this task is that molten metal shrinks on cooling, so the pattern had to be slightly larger than the finished object. To save the patternmaker from performing these calculations whilst working, a patternmaker's ruler would be used with the shrinkage rate already accounted for, hence the larger inch.