It was Fall, 1944. Some students gathered on the porch of a girls’ dorm at Mississippi College, a Baptist college in Clinton, Miss.
Wade Paris
They were ministerial students, church music volunteers, and some who hoped to become foreign missionaries. They were filled with great dreams and were idealistic about the way they would serve. A few of them were quite cocky. They put down those who didn’t do as they thought they should. They explained how things should be. To hear them tell it, God was honored to have them.
Auntie arrived right in the midst of this brag-fest. Auntie was an old black lady who did laundry for students.
She arrived wearing a clean but tattered dress and pulling a battered wagon with clean clothes for delivery. She heard just enough to know the students were talking about serving the Lord.
So, she said, “It just does my heart good to see you young folks plannin’ to serve the Lawd. I’m gettin’ old, and it’s nice to know someone will be servin’ him when us old folks can’t.”
“Auntie,” one smart-aleck remarked, “What work do you do for the ‘Lawd’?”
Image by Vince Scott from Pixabay
“Why, all of it, son,” she said kindly. “The washin’, the ironin’, the gardenin’, I do it all to the glory of God.”
A friend of mine was there. He said, “We learned more about serving God in that brief encounter than we did in our whole college career.”
Auntie was right. You don’t have to be a preacher or a missionary to serve the Lord. Instead, every child of God should serve God with what he or she does.
God does want preachers and missionaries, but God also wants Christian farmers, homemakers, politicians, secretaries, etc., who work to God’s glory.
The Bible puts it this way: “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
