The immediate preceding context of Luke 16:10-11 (pictured) is a very concrete parable about money management.

Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, “who were lovers of money”, and this parable brought them to a state of ridiculing the very Christ for whom they claimed to be waiting. Instead of employing the weight of Heaven through a battle of empyrean wits, Jesus seems to underline the point by citing the Law and the Prophets – something Pharisees couldn’t argue.

Contextually, He drives the point further in His next parable, the one of poor Lazarus and the rich man. In it, Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, admonishes the living to look to Moses and the Prophets, that if they cannot be convinced of their eternal fate by that testament – even hearing truth of a man back from the dead wouldn’t do it.

Since He suggested it—twice—Let us turn to the Old Testament.

When God called Moses, he was tending his father-in-law’s flock. When God called Elisha, he was in the midst of plowing a field. When God called Saul, he was searching above and beyond to find his father’s donkeys. When God called David, he had to come in from his father’s fields to be anointed by Samuel. How many years did Jacob labor before he was rewarded? How many years did Joseph serve before he was reunited with family?

Time and again, God did not call lazy men to craft the foundations of what we now call “Christendom”. He called men who were faithful in the mundane because He needed their faith for the extraordinary.

You cannot order every small thing in your life; the world is too chaotic for that. But you can be faithful with something small and ordinary today. Will it be the laundry, your pets, your job, your prayers, or something much harder?

Your rallying cry, Sister, can be a verse from one of my favorite Longfellow poems:

“Let us, then, be up and doing,
with a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”

@thenomadictroglodyte

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