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Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to do menial work. (Romans 12:16)
The second half of this verse is also rendered as ‘Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.” The two go together. Our position, the value we have in the eyes of the world, is largely determined by the work we do. And our society values work very oddly. Those who grow food, build homes, make basic clothing, clean up messes, care for the very young and the very old, are seen as failures or not seen at all, although we all depend on their work.
I’ve noticed this lack of respect in several contexts. I’ve been at church conferences where people spoke movingly about justice and neighbor-love and then were rude and inconsiderate to the people who served their meals and cleaned up after them. I’ve noticed in my own life that people who meet me when I’m chairing meetings of local community organizations speak to me as to an equal and seem to assume some intelligence on my part, while people who meet me working in the garden tell me confidentially that if I worked really hard I could surely manage to scrape a GED and get a real job. They seem startled when I tell them I am doing what I find most meaningful.
As Christians and as preppers we need to learn to do more of our basic work ourselves, and to see and respect with the people who are already doing such work. Basic work, in healthy amounts, strengthens the body and disciplines the mind. The foundational commandments to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do as we would be done by forbid us to require others to do work for us that we are unwilling to do for ourselves. And the system which supplies our needs without requiring us to know either the skills of practical living or the people who do our work for us is complex, vulnerable and unsustainable; it may not always be there for us. If we are going to try to set up a new system in its place we need to be skilled, and we need to know and live in harmony with the people with whom we share necessary work.
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Today In Christian History
June 9th
0597 – Death of St. Columba (born 521), pioneer missionary to Scotland. From the Isle of Iona, Columba evangelized the mainland of Scotland and Northumbria.
1549 – In England, Parliament established a uniformity of religious services and the first Book of Common Prayer, as Anglicanism became the newly established national faith.
1732 – Englishman James Oglethorpe received a royal charter to form the American colony of Georgia. It was to be a place of refuge for sectarian Protestant believers, persecuted in England.
1784 – In the first step toward formal organization of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., Father John Carroll was appointed superior of the American missions by Pius VI.
1834 – English Baptist missionary pioneer William Carey died at 73. Having translated portions of Scripture into as many as 25 languages, he is known by some today as the ‘father of modern missions.’
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Source for Today in Christian History: www.studylight.org
