Daily Lesson for May 19, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Matthew 6 verse 1:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven."

The other day a friend from church was telling me about one of the first Sundays he came to worship and his father-in-law was sitting on the first row.  He asked his mother-in-law why his father-in-law was sitting up front. She told him it was because he was a deacon, and all the deacons were asked to sit up front as part of a new deacon ordination that Sunday.  That father-in-law is one of the most faithful servants in our church; you can't beat the man when it comes to giving his life to the church.  But the fact that he had not thought to tell his son-in-law he was a deacon told me something also.

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them," Jesus said.  A lot of us want others to know what we're doing and who we're doing it for.  We don't necessarily want people to think we walk on water, but we do want them to know we walk the extra mile.  It's an ego thing; we are insecure about ourselves and so tell (or at least hint) about things we are doing so that others will think we are pulling our weight.  It helps is to feel more secure in ourselves to know that the world might find us necessary.

But Jesus says in doing all this we miss out on our reward from God.  I used to read that and think it meant the reward we would get from God in heaven for all the things we've done - the stars in our heavenly crowns.  I see now that what He is really talking about is the reward we get for doing the right thing for the right reason - pure, genuine and free from the burden of worrying what others might think or not think about it. It is the reward we get in the very moment of serving when we are whole-hearted and present and not concerned about who is watching or who isn't watching, who will know and who will not know.  Getting distracted by all that makes us miss the moment - we miss the reward.  And the reward is the joy of the simple gift itself - given and received.

Now go and make sure you tell everybody you heard it from me ;-)