EVERY morning, as the light rises upon us, there lies a task to our account, which God wills that we shall perform that day. So there is a task to be performed each week. A task, that is laid upon you every month. And so likewise a task, that waits to be performed at every new year, on which you enter.
This year too we entered again, to work.
We are no lords and ladies, who are in this world for our own pleasure, but we are menservants and maidservants, in the service of the Lord our God.
He is our Lord, and we are to be used of Him, and for our small and seemingly insignificant part to labor with Him in the great and gigantic task, which our Lord wills to see finished in this His great and mighty house, from the beginning of the centuries to the end.
You lack therefore all right, to enter upon this year with the thought in your heart, that you will plan, what you yourself would desire to do. He who takes it this way, is wrong, and never brings matters to a good end.
No, your position is that of manservant and maidservant of the Most High, whose eyes must be on the hand of their Lord, and who may not enter upon this year with any other sense or purpose, than in everything to serve that great and mighty Lord, to serve Him by day and by night, from the first day of the year to its close.
In everything for Him, never anything else than for Him, ready at the Word that proceedeth out of His mouth.
As the angels in heaven, so we on the earth.
And therefore daily the prayer on the lips: Thy will be done by us on earth, as in heaven by Thy cherubim and seraphim!
“God’s service,” was a beautiful word for religion, but which by misuse has become a pitiful word.
For “God’s service” now means: I have a life in the world, a life for my thought, a life for my heart, a life in my family, and also a life of a churchly nature, and that is my divine service.
So when one prays it is called divine service; divine service when one sings praises to God; when I pay my vows; and when I place myself at the Sacrament and under the preaching of the Word; but what besides and behind this lies in my life and heart, all that may be what it will, but is not real Divine Service.
Not to propagate this misused word in this false sense, our fathers therefore spoke more of religion; and used the idea of serving God for the service of the Lord in every pathway and in all conditions of life.
So Jesus had pointed it out to us.
He too made a distinction between religion in the narrower sense and divine service in life, and in His beating back of Satan, He calls this: “Worshiping the Lord our God, and serving Him alone.”
And though the one is not thinkable without the other, and it is not possible to serve God, if you do not worship Him, yet the distinction between the two is absolutely indispensable.
You too should surely have this year religion in the narrower sense, and seek fellowship in the mysteries of grace and of prayer; but above and beyond this worship, you are to serve the Lord your God, i. e. your real God’s service must consist in the consecration to the Lord of your whole life, of all your labor, of every talent that is your’s, with the sole question in it all: What wills the Lord that I shall do?
Thus on new year’s day you do not have to sum up all sorts of things, which in this year you are to do. This you can not do, and it would spoil the matter for you.
For to serve God is not the doing of two, three, ten particular things which stand more directly connected with the struggle for God’s kingdom and against Satan. No, but to serve God is always to be servant; even in the most ordinary matters of every day life, in fact, in everything to do the will of the Lord; and to live, think, fight, and labor not for yourself, but only because He lays it upon you. He your King, your Creator and your Lord.
More yet, it must be “being servant” from thankfulness.
Not for gold or silver, but having been redeemed from the slavery of Satan by the blood of the unpunishable and spotless Lamb you have now been brought out from the house of bondage, not henceforth to be your own lord and master; but to be and to remain for ever servant of God and bondslave of Christ.
At the same time child, O, surely, and therefore free from Satan; but never free from your Lord. The Glory and the liberty of the children of God is never that now they may do what is convenient for them to do and that they may live as they please; but always and inexorably, that they are the Lord’s. His purchases. Belonging to Him. His menservants and maidservants. Serving day and night in His temple.
This appliies to the child at school, to the maid in her kitchen, to the mechanic in his daily labor, to the clerk in his office, to the mother in her home, to the merchant behind his counter, to the judge upon the seat of honor, to the king upon his throne.
Every person must serve God. He who is still unregenerate, by reason of the claim of creation from compulsion; and he who has been transposed into grace: from thankfulness moreover.
Understand this well.
You should not say: I do my work at school, at my trade, in my calling according to the requirements of the work, and for as much as good or evil is involved in this, I direct myself according to God’s will.
This is something altogether other, than being a servant of God.
No, to be servant of God, simply means, that everything you do, in school, in the shop, office or study, must not be done for your own sake or for that of another, but for God’s sake.
This a child should know: God put me in this school; God put me under this teacher; God made the rules of writing and reading and arithmetic; God so divided the days into hours; that so in all this the child may see divine ordinances.
And as with the child, so it should be with each of us.
There is human reckoning, human agreement, human order and command, to which we owe response. The needs of life frequently stir us to work, when otherwise we might sit still. But in all these regulations and commands and needs the hand of the Lord is over us, and if it is well done, we serve Him in His temple.
And so it must be with you also this year.
Then the sense of duty puts you in the harness; there comes to you the sense of glorious calling: then every calling, be it that of mechanic or farmer, becomes a divine calling to the man concerned; then every sort of labor is ennobled; then there beams upon all your activities a friendly light from Above; and all disagreeableness and dissatisfaction gives way, because then you are always busily engaged in the service of your Lord.
Against one thing, however, you should be on your guard: do not take this stream of daily activities to be all of your allotted task.
You have yet an altogether other labor to your account.
You have every day to settle your affairs with God in prayer.
You have to form and sanctify your character.
You have to put a check upon your passions and moods and to bridle them.
You have to effect an influence upon your wife, upon your children, upon your environment; and to watch the influence you exert.
You have to study the talents that are in you, that they be not buried in the earth.
In brief, you have not merely to labor in the visible, but also in the invisible.
You must serve your God not least in this, that you help to bring Satan’s work to nought.
To nought round about you in your family, and to nought in the world of your inmost self.
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