PASTOR’S CORNER, Rex Petty, Faith Tabernacle Church, Liberal
Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything worse than being blind, to which she replied “Yes, to be able to see and have no vision.”
The Bible says it best in Proverbs 29:18, which states, "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." The Hebrew word for vision is “revelation,” and the Hebrew word for perish means to lose control or run wild. This verse teaches us how, when a person has no vision, lives are left to time and chance, or what we call luck. It also contrasts this with the blessing found in adhering to God's law. It’s been said before how people are as young as their dreams and as old as their cynicism.
Today, this is reflected in a bumper sticker I recently saw that read “I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go.” The inspiration for this comes from Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” when the dwarfs are joyfully singing “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go” on the way to working in the diamond mine they owned and operated.
When God puts vision into your life, he adds spice and pizazz to your work. Your work is now to please the Lord and do your best to glorify Him. Anything less than this makes life’s daily tasks meaningless because after all, everything in this world will one day pass away as wood, hay and stubble. Only that labor done for God’s sake will be of lasting value, however big or small, as shown in Matthew 6:1 through 4 – “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Martin Luther King Jr. once said “If it falls your lot to be a street-sweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michaelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and Earth will have to pause and say ‘Here lived a great street-sweeper who swept his job well.’”
