Better Dads Better Kids

A devotional I wrote for my church, St. Pauls Lutheran Church in Decatur IL.

Ephesians 6: 7-8   Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

In a speech to striking sanitation workers, Martin Luther King said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.”

In Chapter 33 of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren discusses how the world defines greatness in terms of power, possessions, prestige and position.  If you can demand service from others, you’ve arrived.  In our self-serving culture with its “me first” mentality, acting like a servant is not a popular concept.  Thousands of books have been written on leadership, but few on servanthood.

Jesus, however, measured greatness in terms of service, not status.  God determines your greatness by how many people you serve, not how many people serve you.  

Today, you often hear people complain that there are no good factory jobs any more.  Unfortunately, many of the jobs in the U.S. now are service jobs, and that doesn’t seem to interest many.  If you take a job and do it well, hopefully people will eventually notice, and you will get paid the wage you deserve.  But even if you don’t receive a worldly reward,  you will know that God is pleased with your effort, which is the ultimate goal.