Pencils and Highlighters

[Jesus] sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.” – Mark 9.35 (MSG)

In my world and from my perspective, the people who rock, who are doing the most important work on the planet, are those employed by the church.  They endeavor to spend their human energies communicating the most paramount message in human history: Creator God loves His Creation. 

It’s how I see the world. 

pencils and highlighters

Doctors are important, yes.  But they still haven’t found a way to make the slightest impact on human mortality rates (still hovering around %100 last I heard).  And government?  We need it but it can’t save us (we ourselves have to make hard choices for the whole thing to work).  Sports and entertainment?  Hey, I’ll never figure that one out.

I used to be on staff in a church.  It was years ago.  I had a lot of growth to do.  I basically burned out in ministry because the way I was doing God’s work was destroying the work God was doing in me.  I started all over in my faith.  Before that, my worth and value was tied to what I was doing, so working in a church made me feel like I was more valuable.   I was trying to prove to God how sorry I was for my sin by living as his indentured servant. 

Yeah.  Good luck with that one.  It’s impossible and it’s not what God wants us to do.  But that’s another post…

During that difficult transition I went from an employee of the church to a servant in the church.  Technically, all that changed was where my paycheck was coming from.  But God has significantly changed my heart in the years between now and then.  Where I once served out of obligation, duty, and penance, I know serve out of gratitude, joy, and peace.  Completely different heart condition.  Studying the Bible will teach you more about God than you can ever learn by trying to figure him out on your own.  You can quote me.

This brings me to today’s interruption.

This morning’s verse from Bible Gateway is the from Jesus’ words recorded in Mark 9.  I read it and heard a whisper.  “Be the servant of all.”  Servant.  Servant.  Servant.

In my present heart, that word began a recognizable pulse.  It’s a pulse I’ve learned to know as the voice of God, His heart speaking to mine.

God is constantly in the business of checking our priorities and our definitions of value.  It’s easy to get whacked out on this.  Then God turns things upside down in our dictionary.  (Actually, he re-orients our understanding and makes it right-side-up again.)

Highlighters and pencils don’t really communicate.  They magnify.  They create text, signatures, words on a page.  Stories come from their scratchy interaction with tablets of blank paper.  But they don’t really communicate.  Even the words are really mere symbols on a page to represent the message of the Author.  It’s the author who is communicating.  Just like I am attempting to do now.  Keystrokes carefully considered to communicate a concept.

You and I are God’s pencils and highlighters.  Servants serving.  Some of us are chosen to be paid to give our resources fully to that service.  Some are not.  Maybe those employed by the church are highlighters: magnifying the focal point so others (like me who need focus) can see it.  Maybe all servants are like pencils in the story of God.  Pencils with decision.  Pencils with opinions and passions and purpose.  Pencils with erasers and broken nibs in need of a sharpener now-and-then.  But we are all filling in the unwritten pages of our daily lives, striving to work with our Creator to write the storyof the Church grand and interactive.  Those of us who earn our living by “tent-making” learn our highlighting skills from those who have the opportunity to work more diligently at it, but we are all servants of God.  People-Pencils who yield themselves to a Story filled with the Intentions of an Author who died for it’s Message.

Somedays my pages are like Lamentations.  Others like Psalms.  Even at times perhaps like the gospels.  But I believe yours are worth reading as much as mine.  In your story, I can read particular parts of the Author’s design.  Without your story, I would never know that corner, that precious nook of God’s architectural masterpiece.

Thank you, fellow servant.  Keep your pencil sharp.  Keep highlighting for me when I miss the Main Point. 

Keep writing.

And I will, too.