While It Is Day

            I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. (Jn 9:4)

The Lord Jesus had a keen sense of His mission and how He must make full use of the time He had been given to complete that mission.

On a recent trip to China, I marveled at how God had led His church through extremely difficult times. I visited places where our church has hundreds of thousands of believers in a single county.

Deeply intrigued by how the church survived the Cultural Revolution, I inquired of an elderly minister who had witnessed and experienced the ordeal. He told me that when the church went underground, Bibles were burned and ministers were arrested.

Yet when the church seemed to have been destroyed, many brave women risked their lives and visited the members from house to house to care for their spiritual lives. They stood tall in the harshest of times and the work of God triumphed in the face of oppression.

Deprived of the freedom to worship, believers hungered for spiritual nourishment. When persecution was lifted from the church in China and the material life of the people went on a climb, this minister realized that the trials the church suffered were actually good for the faith of her members. He lamented that as the people in China began to enjoy the freedom of worship, their hunger for God’s word and fervor to serve Him also sadly dwindled.

As I listened to his words, I couldn’t help but reflect on how we have taken our freedom to worship and to serve God for granted. How ironic it is that people yearn to serve God and to draw close to Him the most only when they are deprived of the opportunity! The experience of the church in China has taught us the often forgotten value of the freedom in our relationship with God and our ministry.

We are living in the day. We must take hold of each moment and do His work before the night comes and this opportunity passes us by.

            Question for Reflection:

How would your ministry and walk of faith be different if you bear in mind that time is not in your hands?