Hear now, the word of the Lord from Ecclesiastes 11:1-6.
Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
2 Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.
3 If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
4 He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will not reap.
5 As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
Ecclesiastes 11:1-6
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. This past Friday, my family and I went on some errands. We got to a store where we needed to go. My wife went in and I stayed back with the kids in the van. Our baby started in this time to get a little restless, so I had just gotten him out of the car seat when my wife texted me that she was done and she was headed on her way back out.
Well, in the course of trying to get the baby back in the car seat and texting my wife to let her know where exactly we were parked in the parking lot, so that she could come out to find us. I guess I set my phone on top of the van and forgot that it was there. It wasn't until an hour later that I realized when we were home and getting out of the van and heading inside, and I went to grab it that I realized the phone was not with me. In a moment of horror, I realized what I had likely done.
Now that was an unsettling moment, to say the least. I realized that my chances were not good. Things looked grim. There was almost no way I was going to be able to get this phone back. I started to think about where this could possibly be. We drove across a long area. I thought, how long can a phone stay on the top of a van as it's driving at high speeds? Then apparently it fell off, so can a phone survive a fall to the pavement at that high speed? Even if it survives, the initial impact can survive being driven over by the cars and the semis that I was sure would be driving over it.
At that moment, the risks were high, the odds were very low. I was faced with the question, you know, what can you do when there's nothing you can do? There wasn't much I could do at that point to go back and tell my foolish forgetful self to take my phone off of the van. So what can you do when there's nothing to do? Well, you can only do what you can do.
So I did the only thing I could do. Which was I pulled up, Find My Phone and I was able to locate my phone. It was in the middle of a two way street that I knew exactly where it was, about the first major turn we took. It was about 8.8 miles from my house and it was 1.8 miles from the store we were at. So if you're asking how long a phone stay on the top of a van, it's 1.8 miles.
So I went there in a panic. I was using my wife's phone to FaceTime with her at home to coordinate so that when I got there, she could press the little tone function that it'll beep and let you know where it is. When I got there, there was way too much traffic, which didn't make me feel better. I couldn't hear a thing. So here I was, I realized it wasn't in the center of the street. Thankfully, there was actually a raised median. So to try to get a better look, I walked out on the median. This is in the dark, mind you, as cars are whooshing around me. The things we do for our phones. I went all the way out and I couldn't hear anything and she says, I'm hitting it, I'm hitting it. I could hear nothing, but as I walked, eventually I saw it and there it was. Incidentally, if you need a good review for a cell phone case, I have one and it's totally unharmed.
Now there are times in life where there's just not much we can do again, where the risks are high, where the odds are very low, and in those moments, it's really tempting just to quit before you start. To say, well, there's really nothing can be done here. There's absolutely no chance that this will be pulled off. I genuinely have no idea how that landed in direct middle of the median, except by the grace and the providence of God.
The preacher here wants us to know that as much as he has said throughout this book about foolish action, about fools rushing into areas where they haven't thought things through or acting in a foolish way, especially by putting too much faith in a world that is ultimately vain and broken. The preacher does not want us to make the opposite mistake of thinking that wisdom consists in inactivity and passivity and just waiting back and just throwing in the towel and quitting before we have actually started. Just saying, why bother with this at all? That approach is the preacher tells us in this passage simply isn't wise.
So the preacher tells us that in unsettling uncertainty, and I certainly had unsettling uncertainty with regard to my phone, we need to take appropriate action. That's our big idea In unsettling uncertainty, take appropriate action. This is a passage about not so much the ways that we can save the world with our heroic efforts, but this is a passage that is designed to get us to do something, to do whatever it is that we can do, even when we don't know at all whether things are going to work out.
So the first part of our passage is, first of all, Unsettling Uncertainty and Appropriate Action. And we're going to look at verses one through four for that. Then the second part, which is "You Never Know!" and that's an exclamation point if you're taking notes, there in verses five and six. Only two points today.
1. Unsettling Uncertainty and Appropriate Action
2. You Never Know
I do want to say this is a sermon that is dealing with more common themes, themes about the ways in which we conduct our lives in the world, personally and professionally and things like that and so it's good and right for us to focus on that. However, I do want you to know that at the end, I will consider what this has to say about the gospel. So hang with me until that point.
Unsettling Uncertainty and Appropriate Action
So the first part unsettling uncertainty and appropriate actions and verses one through four. Verses one through four have a series of proverbs where there's a little bit of wisdom given in each one. Individually, some of these proverbs are quite obscure. It's hard to know exactly what the preacher means in some of these proverbs, but together the message is very clear. So it's important for us to understand together what they are saying so that we can go back and look at each proverb individually.
The big idea that he's getting at is that again, the vanity of life that the preacher spent so much time talking about, don't put your hope in this life. This life will not satisfy you. You will not find what you were looking for. That message the preacher doesn't want us to misconstrue as a justification to shut down or to retreat or to withdraw, or to slip back into passivity in life. The preacher has warned us often about foolish action. Now he is going to warn us about foolish inaction.
One of my favorite proverbs gets at this it's Proverbs 26:13, which says,
"The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road!
There is a lion in the streets!”
Proverbs 26:13
So you have to think, but why would a sluggard say that there is a lion in the road? You realize, well, there probably isn't a lion in the road, but somehow the sluggard convinces himself that there is a lion in the road to justify his passivity, his laziness, his sluggardliness. It's easy to imagine risk, and there very often is real risk all around us, but it's foolish to see danger and risk as a reason not to do something. Again in unsettling uncertainty take appropriate action. Derek Kidner, a commentator on this passage, looks at this section versus one through six and just summarizes it with two words, be bold.
Well, as we look at these individual proverbs, the first one is probably the most obscure, the hardest to interpret and verse one. The preacher says, "cast your bread upon the waters", that's the hard part to understand, "for you will find it after many days." Now, it's that last line that gives us a little bit of clarity about what he's saying whatever it means to cast your bread upon the waters, and I'll go through some possibilities here. What the preacher is getting at is that we must, first of all, account for delays. Whatever is going to happen from casting your bread upon the waters, the only benefit you are going to get will only happen after many days. There's going to be a delay. In life, whatever we do, the things that we do, we have to account for the fact that things don't happen, rapid fire as much as we wish that they would.
So what then does it mean to cast your bread upon the waters? Well there's three major options. The first one is alms giving, giving to the poor. Now the weakness of this is that it is nowhere mentioned or hinted at in this passage, but that's one of the traditional interpretations through the ages, that this is about giving to the poor, alms giving to the poor. The idea is that it will come back to you, it'll find you out after many days.
The second option has to do with thinking of casting your bread upon the waters as some kind of senseless action. Really, if you think about it, nothing is gained by throwing your bread into water. It just becomes a soggy, sloppy mess. You can't really eat it anymore. It's just goopy. The idea is that this world is so unpredictable that even the senseless things that you do will have some result at some point in time in the future.
Now that's a possibility, but I think the best explanation is that this is talking about overseas trade putting your bread, your products, your work, the produce of your work on the ships and sending them out onto the seas to trade overseas. Now there are two reasons to think this. Douglas Miller and his commentary points out how many economic matters are dealt with. Again, this is a sermon about common things in our common everyday lives. He talks about bread and verse one, he talks about the portion in verse two, in verse four we have sowing and reaping. Again, this tells us that these economic matters that we're probably not dealing with alms giving, giving to the poor, we're probably dealing with some kind of productive business commerce kind of activity.
The second reason for thinking that this is trade overseas is that we are told twice in 1 Kings that Solomon himself, the author of Ecclesiastes, was engaged in that very work. I 1 Kings 9:26-28 and 10:22, we read twice that Solomon himself put his bread, his goods, his tradable items onto ships and sent them overseas to trade. Now think about the uncertainty of overseas trade in those days. You couldn't get real time updates about where your cargo was. You couldn't even get delivery notification. You wouldn't find for many days whether the ship had successfully sailed somewhere, made the trade and come back with your profits until many days. The preacher saying it's still worth it, even though it's going to take many days account for those delays but be bold in your life. Don't slip into foolish inaction or passivity.
In verse two, the preacher tells us also this that we must diversify your investments. Look at verse two, "give a portion to seven or even to eight", there's that diversity, "for you know not what disaster may happen on Earth." You invest in one area and a disaster may strike that, but if you invest in seven or eight areas, it's much less likely the disaster will strike all of those areas. So through your diversification, your wealth will be made safer.
Again, risk is not a justification for inaction. What the preacher is trying to say is don't put too much stock in the vanity of this world, but you have to live. You have to make an income. You have to support yourself. So make sure that your action is wise and it's governed by wisdom.
Well, third, verse three, the preacher says, whatever will be will be some things are inevitable and beyond our control. So look at verse three, "If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie." Some things are going to happen. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes trees fall. Those things are going to happen. You are going to encounter disasters and hindrances, whether you're active or not.
So saying this, not to paralyze us, but the opposite he is trying to prove to us that there is never a risk free adventure. So in verse four, he tells us not to be ruled by risk. Don't be ruled by risk. Look at verse four, "he who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap." Now, the preacher has already said at a few different times in Ecclesiastes that there is a proper time for certain things. Ecclesiastes 3:1, that's the famous song that was sung by the birds, "to everything there is a time and a season under heaven." You possibly heard on the radio or have you at least read it when we were studying it in this passage. There's a proper time for everything under the sun.
What the preacher is saying here is there's never a perfect time. If you're waiting for the wind to stop before you sow or if you are waiting for the clouds to dissipate before you reap, you'll never find that perfect time. You've got to get on with your life. You've got to get on with your work.
Before I worked in full time pastoral ministry, I worked for a tech startup, I was a bi-vocational pastor. I pastored in my free time and for my full time job, I worked for a tech startup. I had the privilege of working for one of my best friends. He was my boss and like most startups, we had a pretty good idea that we didn't fully know how to package or market or sell, but we just worked really hard to try to figure things out as we went along.
So my job at that time was I was in sales. I made cold calls, endless cold calls to try to set up meetings where I could give sales pitches, where I could give trials of what we were doing in the hope that one day someone would pay our company for what we were doing. We were working really hard to get this company off the ground.
Now, at that time, another company was started right about the same time and it was in the same sphere, the same industry, we had the same home city. So we were kind of competitors right from the beginning. Maybe because of this, they really started to hate our company and really harassed and attacked our company. It got so bad that my boss had his cell phone number posted on Craigslist with this company asking them to call and harass my boss at his home, it was extremely unsettling. The low point for me was when I came across a comment on a blog article randomly, it was a blog article about business ethics, and there was a story that was told about me, about my interactions with one of my clients that was absolutely a lie about the bad ethics that we had apparently engaged in.
When I saw this, that they were attacking me and naming not only my company, but my client's company, I was hurt by this. I was embarrassed. What was I going to say? I was scared. I was angry. I felt helpless. This was extremely unsettling. What can you do when there's nothing you can do? Well, I worked not only for one of my best friends, but also his father was involved in this business and we went and asked him. A man named John Watson, and he'd been in business for 30 plus years. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember the wisdom that he shared. He says this kind of thing happens. This kind of thing happens and this too shall pass. He said, don't worry about that. But he says the second thing is you just got to keep doing what you're doing. Don't let this distract you. Just keep doing what you can do. Just keep moving. It was such an encouragement from a man who had clearly seen his share of battles and has faced his share of attacks and had seen so much, because he was getting the same wise advice as the preacher does here.
Again, think about what the preacher said about the vanity of this world. He said no matter where you turn, no matter what you do, there is going to be unsettling uncertainty. The proper response to this is not inaction. We can't just slink back in our lives. The proper response is appropriate action.
Well, after offering these four parables, the preacher then tries to give sort of a background justification, what justifies the four things he has told us. Here's the justification it's that you don't know much about this world, so you never know which of your efforts may prosper.
You Never Know!
So look at section two and verses five to six, and again, this is the part where it's just, you never know, you never know. In verse five the Preacher writes, "As you do not know", you don't know, you never know, "as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything."
The preacher saying you don't know much about this world, and he goes to the most basic fact of life. Indeed, without this fact, there would be no life. God created human beings to be embodied souls. We are souls and we are bodies and you can't separate that. Well, if you do that's called death, when the soul is stripped away from the body. If you just have a body without a soul that is a dead body, that's a corpse. In that time, when our souls are separated from their bodies after we die, we're not complete. We are awaiting the resurrection of our bodies so that we can once again be embodied souls. Our souls are never meant to be without bodies.
The preacher is saying, think about this mystery. How is it that a soul comes into the life of a human child growing in the womb? Now this is a great proof of the sanctity of life in the womb. The soul comes to the child in the womb. This is a human being in the womb. This is one of the proofs we see in scripture that life is sacred and we must protect life in the womb. That's part of what we are seeing here.
He's getting at this mystery. How does this happen? The answer is we just don't know. Even theologians debate this question to this day because the Bible doesn't give us much information outside of this verse about how this comes to pass. There's one theory among the theologians that just as your body is shaped by the mingling of the DNA of your parents, so also your soul is produced or generated by the mingling of your souls of your parents. Just as you pass down the material part of your body, so parents pass down also the souls down to their children. That's called traducianism. There's another view that God creates each new soul individually in the womb, and that soul comes to the child in the womb, that's called creationism. There's a healthy debate among Bible believing theologians because the Bible just doesn't say much about this mystery.
What the preacher saying is if you don't even know about how you came to be, what do you know? What do you know about your life and about the work of God who makes everything? Well, verse six, since you don't know much, you never know what may prosper. Verse six, "In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand," This either means sow from morning until evening or sow in the morning and in the evening. I also wonder whether the two sowings might refer to two different kinds of seeds because the next thing he says is, "or you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good."
Again, he talked about diversifying earlier in verse two, "give a portion to seven or even to eight for, you know, not what disaster may happen on Earth." So he is maybe saying, keep working, work diligently and maybe work in a different way so that whatever diversification you have to do so that something will prosper and your entire crop will not be lost.
Now, regardless of what he means, again, the point is very clear unsettling uncertainty should not keep us from action, but rather spur us to diligent action, you just never know. If you don't understand the way that you came to be. How can you know how God will work in through your work in the world?
This is the key issue here; this is where the preacher is bringing this into the work of God in the world. You can never understand the mysterious work of God in the world to turn things about, according to his will. Now, sometimes it's vexing. We work our hardest and all of our efforts come to nothing. The preachers talked a lot about that. Here he is saying it's actually to spur us to action. You don't know what will work, so when you're working, you are entrusting yourself to the mysterious will of God to bring about his results in the world.
The 5th century church historian Theodoret tells a story about the mysterious work of God in the world. A story about a Christian monk named Telemachus. Now, for whatever reason, Telemachus was present one day at a Roman gladiatorial battle. Now Christians hated the gladiatorial battles. If you don't like the violence of a football game, understand that when someone gets injured in a football game, everyone stops and it's a big deal and they all clap when an injured person leaves the field. In a gladiator battle the point was to fight until blood was shed and people were left dead in the arena. So Christians hated the gladiatorial games.
One day a monk was there and he saw what was happening was so horrified by the violence and the bloodshed that he ran out into the arena. Now the accounts, there are different accounts, it's unclear exactly what happened, except that we know that he died in the process of this. This monk was either killed trying to get between the gladiators or he was killed when the crowd thought, who is this who has the audacity to interrupt our entertainment? Then they demanded his death. Or maybe the city prefect demanded that he die. Something happened until Telemachus died. You think about all the gore and the bloodshed and the violence and the disregard for the sanctity of human life that Christians should oppose for and couldn't get any worse than this. Now a Christian's blood was shed as he was trying to stop the barbarism.
But in the mysterious working of God, the story of this went to the Christian emperor Honorious, who from this point on January 1st in the year 404 forward took stock of this and made a ban on the gladiatorial game, so they were stopped from that day forward. One man didn't know what to do. What can you do when there's nothing you can do? One man did the only thing he could think to do, and it was a terrible plan. It was the only thing he could do, but it had no chance of success and he was killed in the process of this. The risks were high and the odds were low, and he lost his life. But you never know how God might work. You never know how God might work. That's the kind of boldness the preacher is urging us on toward in this passage.
Application
Now from this passage, let's consider two applications. The first, again, is that that common level. Again, this is a passage that's dealing with our common lives, what we experience personally and professionally, politically and culturally.
1. The first application is this that in unsettling uncertainty, take appropriate action, that's our big idea. Brothers and sisters, it's so easy to look at this world and despair. It's so easy to look at this world and be discouraged by everything happening in politics, in our culture in our neighborhoods, everything happening in our personal lives and in our work. It's so easy to just open up the paper and find a thousand new reasons to be discouraged.
How can anyone function with these issues looming over our heads? Wouldn't it be better, don't we all sometimes fantasize about retreating, withdrawing, going somewhere else? Building a compound somewhere where we can be safe from this world? The preacher gives us such valuable wisdom here. He doesn't tell us to be cavalier or to be foolish, as though these issues didn't exist, to live in denial and pretend that things weren't happening. Yet he also doesn't want us to give up, to throw in the towel, to resign ourselves to passivity and inaction.
Instead, he says that in unsettling uncertainty, take appropriate action. Account for delays, understand that progress and positive change doesn't happen quickly. To diversify your investments, make sure you make yourself less vulnerable and expand your opportunity for growth and success by diversifying where you invest your time, your talents and your treasures, what God has given you to steward. Whatever will be will be. Bad things are going to come one way or another. We don't know in advance the only thing that we know in advance is that we can't change what's going to happen before it comes. Fourth, don't be ruled by risk. Don't give up hope because of how bad things look.
I heard someone recently distinguished between hope and optimism, and I thought it was really a good point for Christians. He says Christians are not optimists, they are hopeful. It means that we don't think that every little thing we do is going to work out perfectly in the way that we imagine it's going to do, that's what an optimist does. Ecclesiastes is a good dose of cold water on our optimism. The Christians are always hopeful. We believe that the God who is working all things and making everything and bringing everything to accomplish his will, is a God who loves us and a God who is caring for us and who has our best at heart for those who love him and who are called according to his purposes.
God teaches us here that he is at work in ways that we cannot possibly understand, in our families, in our work, in our neighborhoods, and in our church. When you continue your work, you don't do so in spite of everything going on in denial. You do so because you know that God is the one who is ultimately in control.
If you are feeling stuck today like this, life is not worth continuing, the preacher says you have no idea what God is doing in and through your life. You have no idea what God is bringing out of what you are doing and the frustration you are feeling.
2. Now again, the preacher is addressing all of life in this passage, especially business and professional pursuits. So it's right to give a general consideration to the exact subject matter he's addressing. It's also important, as we're here today to not miss the gospel in this. That application goes like this that in the uncertain growth of the Gospel, take appropriate action. What's so interesting is the way that Jesus uses this message.
Jesus draws out the preacher's message here in Ecclesiastes, and he draws it into his many sermons in the Kingdom of God, especially as you think about all the way the Kingdom of God deals with sowing and reaping and the uncertainty of the growth of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus took the preacher's message, and he says, this is about the Kingdom of God. In Mark 4:26-29 he tells this parable, for example. Jesus said,
26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Mark 4:26-29, ESV
You don't know how your soul came to be in your body in the womb. The farmer doesn't even know how the crop grows. All the farmer can do is to be diligent, to keep his hand to the plow, to keep working, even though he doesn't know. To know, who knows? No one knows. You never know, but to keep working, expecting that the God who makes everything will continue to work just as he has promised that seed time and harvest will never pass away until this world ends when Christ returns.
Jesus said this wasn't just business advice. This isn't just how we should conduct our farms and our professional lives. This is about the progress of the kingdom, the progress of the gospel of Jesus Christ in this world. Are you discouraged by delays of the progress of the gospel? Charles Bridges, in his commentary on this, writes, "See how this passage furnishes to us a valuable rule and encouragement. He's such much of our toil in the gospel seems to be in vain. Much disappointment arises from the world and often more from the church. The soil is uncongenial. The prospect of harvest is precarious, but the promise is sure you will find it after many days." You don't know how the kingdom is going to sprout, but you will find it after many days.
Are you unsure whether certain opportunities for ministry are worth it? Are you unsure about whether certain investment of the word of God into someone else or into your own life are worth it? Well, part of what the preacher says is diversify your investments. As a church, we're trying to pour the word of God into people from a number of angles. We're urging you to worship privately at homes and with your families. To do so as a part of disciple groups here at the church and Bible study, Sunday school classes, to take part in outreach and missions and evangelism just spread and scatter that seed in the gospel. Even though you don't know how it's going to grow. Ultimately in our corporate worship services, what we are doing right now is the pinnacle of our week where Jesus Christ is at work, spreading the gospel of the kingdom into our lives. Which one of these strategies will be the silver bullet, we don't know. God doesn't give us that. He just has to be faithful. Keep your hand to the plow.
Don't wait until the perfect time when the winds have ceased and clouds have gone away. Continue laboring in the gospel. Share Jesus Christ wherever you go. Less I miss an opportunity in a book that is largely pre-evangelistic, trying to teach us wisdom in this book unless I miss an opportunity, let me tell you the gospel right now. The gospel that we are talking about the Jesus Christ to who used this sermon and integrated it into his own preaching about the kingdom, is a gospel about the son of God who loved you so much that he was sent by his father into this world to die for you in your place. God so loved the world that whosoever believes in Jesus Christ, he gave his son and whosoever believes in Jesus Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life.
This seed is the gospel that goes out to all the world and you don't know where it's going to fall on good soil. Our task is not soil diagnostics. Our task is to scatter the seed and wait on the God who makes everything to do his work.
Are you worried then the disaster is going to strike this church? Let me clarify it for you. Yes, disaster will strike this church and the church as a whole. Disaster has not ceased from striking the church of Jesus Christ from the day he sent his church into the world. Rain clouds will gather and trees will fall, we can't control that. We know it's going to come, we can only keep our hand to the plow. Are you doubtful in your own life about whether the time is right to serve or to share the gospel with someone you've been praying about for the wild for a while? Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, and I can't answer that question. To everything under heaven there is a time and a season, but there's a difference between looking for the proper time. Scripture says there is a proper time for everything under heaven and waiting endlessly for the perfect time that will never come. The proper time does come, the perfect time will never come until Jesus Christ returns.
Five hundred years ago, those who began the Protestant Reformation were wondering whether the project to recover the scriptures and the preaching of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners had any chance to go anywhere. They were wondering about this. They were laboring in the gospel and didn't know where this would go. In fact, five hundred years ago this year, we celebrated the five hundred anniversary of the Reformation as a whole four years ago and 1517.
Five hundred years ago this year, 1521 was the year that Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. It was in 1521 that Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms, where he had the chance to recant the preaching and the gospel. He had to think about this overnight. He knew this was an incredibly momentous decision in his life. Would he recant or would he stay faithful to the scriptures? On April 18, 1521, he said those famous words, "Unless I am convinced by the testimony of scripture or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen." According to some tradition, this is when he said, "Here I stand. I can do no other."
In the face of disaster, what did he do? He could simply stay faithful to the word of God. Keep his hand to the plow, keep studying, keep praying, keep preaching, keep teaching. He did not know what God was going to do. He did not know how those seeds of the gospel unleashed again after being clouded under a dark period of history where the gospel was veiled and covered over. He did not know what the gospel was going to do, and neither do we. He was called to be faithful in his time, and we are called to be faithful and ours. At the end of the day, we don't know how God is going to build his kingdom, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but we are given promises that should drive us to take appropriate action anyway.
One of my favorites is in 1 Corinthians 15:58, and with this I'll close.
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:58
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us faith to trust that you are continuing to work out your plan. In the deepest of uncertainties, we pray that you would give us faith, no matter how unsettling the situations we face, to continue following you to continue to take appropriate action to do whatever it is that we can do. Not as the hope of saving ourselves, we're trusting in Christ alone for our salvation, but trusting that you will take the few seeds that we scatter and will build something that we cannot think or imagine by your work and by your grace and all for your glory. We pray this in Christ name. Amen.
