Happy Christmas!! I am running a giveaway this week, so please hop over to this post and leave a comment if you want to enter! I hope you have a wonderful and joy-filled day.
I read two stories in my Bible yesterday – both of women who did ordinary things. Yet through doing those ordinary things in a way that honoured God, they accomplished extraordinary things and were rewarded.
The Hebrew midwives in Egypt. They were just doing their job as midwives, a pretty normal thing to do. Then Pharaoh commanded them to kill the baby boys as they delivered them. ‘But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.’
They obeyed God who says, ‘do not kill’ rather than man, even though their lives might have been taken as a result.
Two things I noticed came from their fear of God. One was that many baby boys were saved from death, and families from heartache. The other is that God saw what they did and rewarded them.
It is quite possible that nobody else knew of their command to kill the boys at the time, because if they had known then they might not have used the midwives to deliver their babies. But God knew, and it says, ‘Therefore God dealt well with the midwives… and so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them.’
The second story I read was also of a woman – Ruth. She was a very ordinary woman whose husband had died and who left her own country to stay and help her widowed mother-in-law. She was doing nothing particularly noticeable, and gleaned the leftovers of grain to support them.
I noticed the same two things though. She honoured God by loving and helping her mother-in-law, and God saw what she did and rewarded her. The man in charge of the fields helped protect her and made sure she got food and enough grain.
When she asked him why she had found favour in his eyes even though she was a stranger, he said, ‘It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law…’ And of course it wasn’t long before he married her – he a man of great wealth, marrying a poor stranger.
The extraordinary thing that happened as a result of her honouring God was that she was then brought into the family line that Jesus ended up coming from. So she joins all the other names in the genealogy of the Saviour of the world, whose birthday we are celebrating today.
My encouragement from this was that though I often feel insignificant because I am doing menial work which doesn’t seem to impact too many people other than my immediate family, God sees it. And God will reward us, if not in this life then the next. And who knows… maybe extraordinary things will come of it!
‘But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.’ Matt 6:3,4
It is so easy to get caught up in the stress of interruptions, whining, crying and yet another spill to clean up. I can so easily get impatient and start snapping, or feeling discontent and wishing it would all go a bit faster and they would grow up more quickly!
But I want to honour God in what I do by being thankful for what He has given me right now, and for those sweet little faces and hearts, and do my best to show Christ to them in the way I speak and act.
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| After Hope’s birth – tired but joyful with sweet blessings in my arms |
Today is Christmas Day and I want to try and reflect what I have learned by focusing on God and the souls and hearts of my family and others, and not get too bothered by potatoes and messes, or discouraged by too many things to do and not enough time to do it in! Because as Elisabeth Elliot says, there is always enough time to do God’s will in each day 🙂
Linking up with The Beauty in His Grip, please see sidebar for buttons.
Happy Christmas to you too, sweetest daughter!
I have just been reading in Adolph Saphir’s ‘Our Life-Day’:
“Let not imagination dishonour the wisdom of God by fancying other circumstances and spheres of labour in which we could be more useful.
Though this be our last day on earth, we can make no better use of it than by fulfilling this day’s task, by enduring patiently this day’s trials, by showing a Christlike, loving spirit to our household, and to all with whom this day we are brought into contact.”
Rejoice in today!See you tomorrow!
That’s a great quote 🙂 I like the ‘loving spirit to our household’ and ‘enduring patiently this day’s trials’. See you soon!
Merry Christmas, Rhoda! Thank you for the encouraging post: “let us not grow weary while doing good for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” Galatians 6:9 🙂
Thank you for the reminder of both those stories. The thing I love about the story of Ruth is that she didn’t do anything miraculous like saving the country, she honored God in all the choices she made.
You’re right…God sees. And not only does He see what we do, He sees and knows our hearts! God always blesses a heart surrendered to Him!
Merry Christmas! Joan
Many thanks for hosting this site. Your stories of Godly Women and their faith are inspiring!
Merry Christmas, Brooke! Thanks for the encouraging comment too 😉
Hi Sharon, I really like that about her story too.
Hi Joan, yes I just thought the other day that the fact God sees what I think and say and do is enough for me to live a life that pleases Him!
Hi Robert, thanks for visiting!