Written in Heaven

My mom's been a minister of music at the same church now for about 18 years. That's a long time if you didn't know that. When I was a kid, we would go with her to church during the week when we didn't have school. She would find stuff for us to do, or my sister, brother, and I would usually find a way to kill each other during the workday. One day our church decided to go big or go home and bought new hymnals. So it became the duty of my sister, brother, and me to collect all of the old hymnals, stamp the new hymnals with our church name (hymnal theft was a major issue at the time) and put out the new ones. I don't remember how many hymnals there were, but I remember that the sanctuary sat about 1200 people, and for a 10 year old kid, that's a lot of hymnals. It took my siblings and I the better part of a week to get those things in, but the following Sunday we knew that it would be worth it because of all of the sweet attention we would get for "serving" the Lord so graciously.

Sunday comes around and the place is a buzz with all of the new hymnals that have been put in the beautiful orange pews. The pastor got up to make his announcements and my siblings and I made eye contact with that look that says, "here it comes, let's get ready to become heros." The pastor got up and made several comments about the beautiful new hymnals and people clapped because of the new hymnals and their excitement surrounding them, but neither my name nor my siblings were ever mentioned. Of course, I was outraged by this development. I went to my mom and demanded a reason for this short-sighted gratitude. My mom, full of the Holy Spirit, (if the guys in the Bible can say that, so can I because it's true) looks at me and says, "sometimes we do things because they need to be done and God wants us to, not because we'll get credit for it."

That was the first time that the message of serving others really stuck with me. That's when I began to realize that credit is one of the worse things you can get, because it can go straight to your head. One of my biggest fears is that I will have faith in myself and forget about God. I never want that to happen, and I thank God for a mother who didn't want to see that happen either. And you thought hymnals were irrelevant...