The Daily Pearl
On Service
A pearl kept from the brand’s mornings: a verse to hold, a prayer to say and a word to carry.
“And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.”
Colossians 3 : 23
A Prayer for This Morning
Lord, so much of what I do today will be seen by no one, and I confess that this discourages me more than it should. Change my audience. Let every hidden task be done heartily, as to you, and let that be enough.
Affirmation
My unseen work is seen, and I do it for an audience of One.
The Reflection
Whatsoever ye do covers a discouragingly comprehensive territory: the laundry as well as the ministry, the spreadsheet as well as the psalm. Paul's instruction was first given to servants whose work would never be credited, and it performs a quiet revolution: it relocates the audience. Heartily, as to the Lord. The work does not change. The witness does.
Nacre is the brand’s picture of such service. No single layer of mother-of-pearl is impressive; each is thin to the point of invisibility, laid in the dark, admired by nothing. But the layers keep coming, one faithful film after another, and the result is the only gem the world has never improved by cutting. Hidden service builds lustre the same way. Slowly, and entirely.
In Her Company
St Teresa of Calcutta
She sought Christ in the poorest of the poor and taught a distracted century to do small things with great love.
Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje in 1910 and went to India as a Loreto sister at nineteen. In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta to serve the poorest of the poor, work that spread to more than a hundred countries in her lifetime. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, died in 1997, and was canonised in 2016.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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