I am tired. With the time change, Spring forward, I haven’t adjusted yet and am getting to sleep too late and getting up too early. Such are the minor travails of life, and believe me, this is minor.
When we are tired, everything starts slipping: we aren’t as crisp at anything we do and our motivation ebbs considerably. Then the test comes. You still have to do what you need or committed to do. Those things don’t care about tired. Just one more hurdle to overcome.
Isn’t that what perseverance is about? If we didn’t have obstacles to overcome, there would be no need to persevere. We would just sail along without a care doing what comes next. Maybe that’s heaven, but it isn’t life on planet earth in 2021. So I keep my Lenten blogging commitment, I take my vitamins, I make dinner for my wife and me, and I get ready for work tomorrow. Life goes on; we persevere, tired or not.
Now I might be tempted to pat myself on the back for that, but didn’t Jesus remind us that there is nothing special about doing our duty; it is expected. In Luke 17:7-11 Jesus addresses this directly.
7“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”
So to be sure, tired still means you do your duty and get nothing special for having done it. That sounds harsh you say? May be. But, in truth, we forget that while God is gracious and we have been saved by grace, we have no right to presume upon that grace and expect to be rewarded for merely doing the right thing. How spoiled and self-centered we are. Time to strip those failings from our life and if God is compassionate to us, we must never presume upon that compassion and begin to expect it as a right. Presumption is a dirty sin. It breaks relationships and creates envy and strife. Cleanse it from your soul and go now and do your duty.
