Still Useful

When I first started ministry back in 1971, I started a writing ministry that has continued until the present moment through this blog.  Back then no one used the word "blog."  Like the internet, it was something which did not exist.  This morning as I was moving stuff around, I found a couple of copies of some newpasper devotionals that I wrote weekly for the local county paper.  The heading for these weekly articles was "A Different Perspective."  I wrote under this heading in every church I served except for the years I was in Columbus.    

When I was just a couple of years away from retiring, I started writing "JourneyNotes" which I can now see as a way the Lord enabled me to continue with a ministry given to me from the beginnning.  The preaching part of that ministry is no more, but still I am still writing.  I have learned in these years of retirment that the call to ministry has never been lifted, but that its focus has changed.  I am grateful that the Lord still looks at me as useful for what He is about where He has put me in this world of His.    

It is something we all need to remember with gratitude.  No matter how old we have become and even though the world rushes by us and often puts us in the not so important category, nothing has changed for the One who died for us on the cross.  We are still loved by Him.  He did not just offer Himself for the young and vigorous, the ones with a long productive future ahead of them, but for folks like the thief who died alongside Him on the cross, Judas and Peter who denied Him at the end, and folks like you and me who have a history of faithfulness and not being as faithful as we intended.  I often remember an old saying from long ago which declares. "God don't make no junk."  I reckon that includes all of us in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.