Daily Devotion for Lent 2021 - Day 14

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 3 (NRSV)

Raising up leadership is never easy and sometimes frustrating.  But it is also the source of great joy!

Paul is experiencing this through the church at Corinth.  He's bringing them along slowly and understands that they are still experiencing jealousy and quarreling.  I hate to break it to Paul but we still deal with these today and it's been almost 2000 years!

So while most leadership would try to dispel these traits, Christian leadership lifts up the opposite values of trust and peace as things we actively pursue.

Paul is trying to remind his new church that grace need not be territorial.  We each have our part to play and if we see God as active within our lives, we find that glory and accolades don't matter as much.  God is the one we ultimately praise for our successes.

His example of planting, watering and growth reminds us that we are never the sole authors of our own achievements.  The question becomes can I become a big enough person to admit the help I've received along the way or am I so insecure that I must claim it all for myself?

And as I see God helping me, it reminds me that I should be a vehicle of God's help for others.  This is the beauty of Christian leadership.  We understand fundamentally that we are never left to our own devices.  God walks the road with us.

I like how Paul ends the chapter with a kind of Zen approach:

For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

This allows us to step out of the rat race in a way.  As Christ is in all and we are in Christ, we are connected to the planting and the watering and the growth.  So the territorialism doesn't matter because God transcends territory.

And in the 21st century, can we still see leadership functioning in the same way?  In a flattened world, where hierarchies don't function with the same authority, does this decrease or increase our sense of territory?

We all influence each other and we are influenced by lots of voices.

So ultimately, if we look for how God is present in the surrounding voices, this may help us to decide  which voices more clearly articulate God for us.  Maybe this is the discernment we need to remind us that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.

Like Paul indicates - you are a holy vessel.

Prayer for the day:

Ever-present God, we find that your presence surrounds us through even the mundane.  We may recognize you in the blessing and we may find courage and strength to battle difficulties.  But it is in the daily routine that we often forget to look for you.  Help us to not only see you in the small things but to allow our small actions and words to bring great joy.  We pray these things in Christ who is in all.  Amen.

Photo by It's No Game via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons license.

All scripture quoted is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.