• June 2023

    • An ordinary life

      Author: Rev. Douglas McCallum

      Dear CPC Family,

      One notable feature of the book of Ruth is the way in which God uses ordinary people in order to advance his kingdom purposes. Ruth was a Moabite widow, an unclean outsider. Boaz, though a native of Israel and a landowner of local signiEicance, did not belong to the nation’s elite. Both were relatively ordinary people. And yet, God chose to use them in his grand plan of salvation. After they got married, Boaz and Ruth had a son, Obed, who would later become the grandfather of David, Israel’s greatest king. And from the line of David came the Saviour and King of the world, Jesus Christ.

      When she arrived in Bethlehem with Naomi, her mother-in-law, I doubt Ruth had the slightest inclination that one day she would be celebrated as an ancestor of King David, far less of the Lord Jesus. She was a poor and vulnerable widow. She was a foreigner from the despised nation of Moab. She was unwanted and unwelcome. But Ruth loved the Lord (1:16-17) and the Lord loved her. And in his good and wise providence, the Lord used this ordinary, yet faithful woman, to help accomplish his extraordinary plan of bringing redemption to the world.

      I say this in order to encourage you. In our age of celebrity, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need to be an impressive, prominent person in order to have any real impact in the world. It is easy to think, moreover, that this is exactly what the church needs: “big names” - pastors or leaders of superstar quality - who will, to adapt a well-known political slogan, “Make the Church of Jesus Christ Great Again.”

      But this is not true. God does not need Christian celebrities (strictly-speaking, he does not need anyone!) and rarely does he use such people. Most of the time, he is pleased to use those whom the world may think of as weak and foolish, ordinary and unimpressive, in order to advance his kingdom purposes. He uses those who, like Ruth and Boaz, do not live in Hollywood mansions or walk on red carpets, but who work in fields and gather in grain, who care for the weak and take pity on the poor, who love the outsider and open up their home, who do a good day’s work and provide for their family. These are the people God delights to use for the good of his kingdom and the glory of his name: humble, faithful, ordinary servants.

      And it should come as no surprise that it is such ordinary servants that God uses and, in many senses, prizes most highly. For his own Son, though the most extraordinary person in the world, became an ordinary Galilean carpenter. And in such ordinariness, in such apparent weakness and foolishness, Jesus accomplished the most extraordinary good.

      So, don’t worry about making an impact. Don’t seek to be a Christian “influencer.” Don’t think you need to make a name for yourself. Just live your ordinary, perhaps even sometimes humdrum, life in faithful service to your Saviour. You won’t receive the accolades of men for living this way, but you will receive the acclaim of God. And that, in the end, is all that matters.

      Yours in Christ,

      Doug