Saturday, July 08, 2006

"Real" Life

A song I like alot contains a line that probably sums up life for most of us: "Mill work ain't easy, mill work ain't hard. Mill work ain't nothing but an awful boring job."

I think most of us can relate to this song. No matter how much you may love your job, there are parts of it you don't like. And while there may be highs (and lows) in your labors, for most of us, much of it can be downright boring--doing the same old things day after day. There is nothing like the exhilaration of baptizing someone into Christ, but the teaching that leads up to that moment is almost 2nd nature to me now. Even the questions that people ask have been asked and answered many times before. The follow up necessary to convert a contact to a prospect, to set up the study, the cancelled studies because "they forgot" can at times seem pointless and all too often prove to pointless (at least for now) but when that moment comes and they say they want to be baptized it's all worth it.

So what's the point here? Even though it seems that no one notices or responds to your efforts to encourage another to study, or to teach someone may seem boring or mundane they are part of the process of conversion. So much of converting others isn't easy, or hard, but rather awful boring. There are two main reasons we fail to teach others: 1) we never approach them and 2) we don't follow up--it gets boring and we move on to other more "interesting" things. One Brother in St. Croix had studied the Bible for more than 14 years, off and on, before he was baptized. Since that time he has never looked back and even though his wife refuses to attend with him (she was a "Christian" before him) he continues going forward.

No, life ain't easy, life ain't hard, but life can be an awful boring job. Don't let that get you down--keep plugging along and you will sooner or later see results.

Tol

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