With Great Power . . .

Read: Colossians 3-4

It's funny but here I am again, reading and dlogging right after watching a TV show. This time it's Smallville, a quite good show that I just started watching this week after fascination that's lasted a year so far without me acutally seeing the show. Anyways, one thing I have noticed is that Clark/Superman has it so good. He can do whatever he wants! And he can do it well, not to mention much faster than any of us! At the start of the pilot he misses the bus but runs past it and beats his friends to school. When they question him on how he got there so fast, he simply tells them he took a shortcut.

But that's thing about Clark: he doesn't take the shortcuts. He does things with an amazing amount of integrity. Always. Guess that's what makes him Superman :) So often he has the choice of doing things the easy way, to do the minimum that would get by. Or to do the thing that would be kind of wrong but easily rationalized and no on would say anything. But he doesn't. Talk about integrity just coming out of his butt! It's an amazing thing. I think a certain other superhero said it perfectly when he epiphanized, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Stop and consider that for a moment in terms of Colossians 3:22-25. You're going to have to read it because it's just that good. Sure, it's addressing the servants of Paul's time (more like slaves?) and we're definitely not servants nor slaves so that's a good thing. But we're all serving someone: a church, a girlfriend, a car badly in need of maintenance, etc. What a wakeup call God gives us in this verse that our, "Well I'm tired today so I'll just do what I feel like and call it a day," isn't good enough. Man, what a kick in the pants. We have a huge responsibility, especially in ministry. We may not be wearing spandex and capes, but there are still lives on the line and that is huge when you stop to think about it. Bigger than huge even! (Yes, Ben, I'll be even more accepting of grander ideas with my language ;) )

"Being Christian doesn't cover up bad work." Our work has consequences that are going to echo through eternity. Even when we're not "working," same thing: we are responsible and we are powerful because of that responsible. Conversely, because we are powerful we must be responsible. And here's the kicker: it's not a burden, it's not a sacrifice; it's what God has blessed us with! Forget the tension between blessings and curses, this is all blessing and it's our broken perspective that turns it into a curse.

To conclude, as Paul and the Cub Scouts tell us, "Do your best."