Treasures in jars of clay

Some sharing for Girls Group around two months ago:


As some of you might know, I started working at a nursing home as a kitchenhand a month and a half ago. Working in a nursing home has been great, serving the elderly people as well as gaining experience of what goes on in the kitchen. If I work a day shift, there is the cook there working with me, and if I work an afternoon shift, I’m on my own in the kitchen. But whether it be day or afternoon, I’m always working for the elderly residents there, that doesn’t change. In fact, nothing changes except for the menu and the residents’ faces. If I don’t work there for a fortnight, I can be certain that there will be one new face there, and an old face gone. Most of the time, the old face goes because the resident has passed away.

Serving the elderly is great because they’ve done so much and they need to be looked after and respected now. Sometimes, however, it puts an emotional strain on me when all I see around me is deterioration. The residents never grow and develop like children do, all we seem to be able to do is to help slow down their rates of deterioration and degradation.

Such a reflection reminded me a talk I heard at the end of last year on 2 Corinthians 4. (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20corinthians%204;&version=31;) That chapter really spoke to me just recently during my quiet times, giving me great encouragement, particularly in terms of spreading the gospel. I find that ministry can be so difficult and seemingly hopeless sometimes, part of the reason found in 2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Also, we can continually wasting away outwardly (2 Cor 4:16). From the moment we’re born, we’re inching slowly towards the other end – death. Our bodies will decay, things will slow down, and eventually stop. I’m reminded of this so vividly at the nursing home. So sometimes carrying God’s good news to the ends of the earth seems hopeless.

But even though we’re wasting away, “inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16). What awaits us eternally far outweighs what is. Paul paints a picture of treasures in jars of clay – the gospel being the treasure placed in clay jars that have little value or beauty and do not attract attention to themselves or their precious contents. We are so full of life even when we are always being given over to death, for Jesus’ life may then be revealed in our decaying body. What really encourages me is that God’s power surpasses all the difficulties and degradation. It is not us, but Him! “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Cor 4:8-9).