The Thankless Grunt Work

The mom's bible study I participate in is doing the book of John this year, so that gives me ample opportunity to contemplate it.  You'll probably notice quite a few posts about it over the next few months.

I find it helpful to imagine where I would be in the story if I were there or to just put myself in the place of different characters in the story.  It helps me to get a better idea of what was going on and to pull out lessons for my own life - even if those seem to be a little off the wall.

I found myself reading John 2 this week and identifying with a part of it I had never bothered to notice.  Sure, I have read the story of the Wedding at Cana a million times, but a different part jumped out at me.

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.  When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."  (And) Jesus said to her, "Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come."  His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."  Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.  Jesus told them, "Fill the jars with water." So they filled them to the brim.

I hate it when I want to get a drink of water and have to be the one to heft one of those giant 5 gallon bottles of water onto a cooler.  They are heavy and bulky and it is just no easy task.  Each of the SIX jars at this wedding had to be filled with at least 4 times one of those bottles with a total of 120 to 150 gallons.  And just to make things more complicated, they didn't go and grab the garden hose and twist the nozzle to fill these babies up.  They either had to move the whole jar or make many trips with heavy jugs of water to fill them up. And they had to draw the water as well.  Essentially, what Jesus told them to do was a lot of work. 

Day after day I can find myself feeling the crushing weight of the work that needs to be done around here.  The amount of work that needs to be done before 7AM is enough to make me not want to get out of bed in the morning.  But they are a part of the grunt work behind the miracle of my family.

Jesus asks us to do incredible things as mothers.  A lot of it is just background grunt work to keep things running smoothly.  We build the set and set the stage for our children and husbands to go out into the world and make a difference.  Sometimes we get a chance to step forward and be the one making a visible difference, but more often we are carrying water.  Like the servants, it is the task Jesus has set before us.  When we do that work, we make possible His miracles.