God as our Manager

God seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly in the twinkling of an eye.

C. S. Lewis wrote this comment on God and it has struck me as rather strange. Why would God do this? Could it be that, to paraphrase from the Batman Begins film, we fall so we can learn to pick ourselves back up again? So we work - poorly - so we can learn to work properly. Is this some form of training for a greater job up ahead? We do, after all, have a lot of work ahead of us.

We are not saved by works, but we are saved for works (Eph. 2:10). There have been works prepared for us. I am not sure what this all means. This is just a few of my thoughts on the matter. It might mean that we all have our respective works, or chores, to realize. We are a family, yet in this family though we are all the same we are all different. Brilliant contradiction, but not really, it is only an apparent contradiction and whenever an apparent contradiction is found one is sometimes able to find a perfect complement to explain it all away.

As a family we are one unit, but we are all quite individual all along. It works also with the metaphor of the body. We are one body yet we all have individual responsibilities (works). We all work together to the same end but our chores (works) might vary. One could insert here the controversial idea of spiritual gifts, or talents, or abilities, or any other form of capability. And yet it is interesting to consider that we are all unique. We are different in that we are really all the same. We all work together for His glory.

The key concept is, I think, to simply overlook what our individual responsibilities might be and just to get the job done. It's not like we aren't all responsible to serve, to evangelize, to teach, to encourage, and so much more. I might be more suited in one area, say teaching for example, but I am still going to be held accountable for evangelism. Frightening thought!

So let's get the job done, remembering that William Law said, "For God has made no promises of mercy to the slothful and negligent. His mercy is only offered to our frail and imperfect, but best endeavors, to practice all manner of righteousness."