But the Servants Knew

Do we cry out for recognition or what? On a high cliff, perhaps 300 feet high, I see "RICK WAS HERE" spray-painted in large letters along a highway in upstate New York. Engraved in tree bark, or concrete on a sidewalk, we are eager to make our "feeble mark" in life. If we can't make it in the newspaper for good reasons, we might want to be there for bad reasons.

All of this design in our soul is not an accident. We who have lost our way are blindly groping, trying to find the Light. Why am I here? Could somebody recognize me? Let's have a birthday party for me. You come to mine and I'll come to yours. Please tell me my life means something - like the flag planted on the moon by the Americans. We were here. How about buying a brick with your name on it planted it in the municipal park? Not everybody is able to win a gold medal in the Olympics - or smart enough to discover that E=mc². No, most of us are just common folk. But do we count?

Listen - here is good news: ALL of this searching for me - my value and meaning - is over when the living Christ comes into my life. 

Follow this story. At the wedding feast, the wine ran out. Christ performed a miracle by telling the servants to "fill the water pots with water." And they filled them to the brim. And he said to them, "Draw out now and take it to the manager of the feast. So they took him some" (John 2:6-8). The manager did not know where the better wine came from "but the servants that drew the water knew" (verse 9). The servants knew. When you are included in God's work, it has a great effect on you. It is like a child included in a family secret, a teenager entrusted with a confidence, a young adult understanding the value of a responsibility and its reward.

It is more than this. They understood in their hearts that the water in the large jars changed. Do we need our name remembered when we now realize we are part of Him? We are part of His marvelous work. We carry a very personalized secret in our hearts. It is written by the Spirit of God in the deepest fiber of our being.

The servants knew, but the manager of the whole affair did not know. Their worlds were so different from each other. One carries an internal, personal knowledge that will never be forgotten - written in the heart. The sense of being included in God's work and the sense of being trusted, meets our need for personal value. The other does not know this. He wants a connection with the ultimate meaning of life, but all he can find is his name in a newspaper or on a bathroom wall or in the Guinness Book of World Records. The servants could whisper to their friend the secret. "You won't believe it," they'll say. "The water was turned into wine." This personal understanding is what counts. This is what we need. We need the connection, the involvement and the invitation into the miracle. "Our mark" does not come from ourselves; it comes from God's personal care for us. It comes from him being close to us. It comes from God saying '...be glad because your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:20). It comes from God's Spirit saying "you can be sure that whoever gives even a drink of cold water to one of the least of these... will certainly receive a reward" (Matthew 10:42); or "take off your sandals because you are standing on holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).

If you do not know this, then you look for something that will help you stamp your meaning into this world. But if you "know" then you are finished with the lower elements of this world. Nothing here compares. A dead man has been made alive. A sinner is made a saint. A lost man has been found. A missionary has seen it - and knows. A church knows that water is changed entirely into something "else," therefore, the members cannot stop meeting. It is too awesome! We hardly can believe it, but we will never deny it. Our God has His stamp on us!