{"id":4612,"date":"2025-05-08T07:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T11:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4612"},"modified":"2025-05-08T07:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T11:16:11","slug":"one-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/08\/one-job\/","title":{"rendered":"One Job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

You had one job. <\/em>

The internet teems with examples of work projects that fell just a tad short of perfection:\u00a0misspelled words, mislabeled products, toilets installed upside-down, and highway direction signs that appear to beckon drivers into walls or over a precipice.\u00a0

You had just one thing to do.\u00a0And if you mess that up, everybody will know it.

The Bible\u2019s version of \u201cyou had one job\u201d appears in I Corinthians chapter 13.

That\u2019s where the apostle Paul writes that no matter what circumstances we will face today, there\u2019s only one right response.\u00a0That response is love.\u00a0Our call is to love God from dawn until dusk, and love everyone who crosses our path the way God loves us.

There\u2019s something in human nature, however, that pushes back hard against that simple directive.

We can think of a lot of things that seem more important than love.

How about supernatural gifts \u2013 amazing talents that will profoundly impact other people?\u00a0But Paul isn\u2019t having it:\u00a0\u201cIf I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don\u2019t love, I\u2019m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate\u201d (I Cor 13:1, The Message<\/em>).

Even if the Holy Spirit should gift us with an extraordinary ability, it will turn out to be worthless if we flunk our \u201cone job,\u201d which is to love.\u00a0

How about superior insight?

This is the central temptation of our day.\u00a0We love to be right.\u00a0We love being known as the Smartest Person in the Room.\u00a0Or at least the Most Spiritually Informed Person in the Pew.\u00a0

But again, Paul is ruthless:\u00a0\u201cIf I speak God\u2019s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, \u2018Jump,\u2019 and it jumps, but I don\u2019t love, I\u2019m nothing\u201d (verse 2).\u00a0

Superior insight seems like an awesome thing.\u00a0But without love, it turns us into spiritual also-rans.\u00a0

Bible commentator William Barclay writes, \u201cMore people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts in the world.\u201d

Lots of people might try out a church named Grace.\u00a0But not many people would line up to worship at a place called The We\u2019re-Right-And-We-Know-It Church.\u00a0

How about supreme commitment?\u00a0That should top everything, right?

Commitment matters.\u00a0It matters immensely. But it\u2019s not Job One.\u00a0

Paul writes, \u201cIf I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don\u2019t love, I\u2019ve gotten nowhere.\u00a0 So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I\u2019m bankrupt without love\u201d (verse 3).

If we love God and love others, everything else \u2013 supernatural gifts, superior insight, and supreme commitment \u2013 will take care of itself.

We have one job<\/em>.\u00a0

If we get that right, we\u2019re on our way to getting everything else right.

Otherwise, we\u2019ll all need to go back to shcool. \u00a0
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here You had one job. The internet teems with examples of work projects that fell just a tad short of perfection:\u00a0misspelled words, mislabeled products, toilets installed upside-down, and highway direction signs that appear to beckon drivers into walls or over a precipice.\u00a0 You had just one thing to do.\u00a0And if you mess… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[923,104],"class_list":["post-4612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-i-corinthians-13","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4614,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions\/4614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}