The Most Essential Worker

OUR ESSENTIAL VOCABULARY

Sometime early last year, the United States government introduced some new terms to its constituents: essential worker and nonessential worker.  These terms, intended to help us decide who needed to physically show up at the workplace during the Covid 19 crisis, instantly became part of our pandemic phraseology.  Here’s how one internet site defined these new categories: A nonessential worker’s duties do not impact the critical infrastructure of a city, state, or country. Essential workers are employed in roles that are vital during a natural disaster or emergency, such as healthcare workers, emergency services, and public workers.

OUR ESSENTIAL IDENTITY

During the tenuous days of the early (and middle and late) pandemic period, the essential workers continued to report to work, day after day, while other nonessential employees quarantined themselves in their work-at-home offices. The sacrifices these essential workers made on our behalf is humbling; we should be incredibly grateful. Sometimes, though, this label of essential worker was not as clear cut as we might believe.  Numerous professional organizations, because of financial hardship and/or restructuring, had to make tough decisions on who to keep and who to let go.  The label of being nonessential, in this sense, was devastating for some who felt their competence or abilities were being questioned.  I think many of our Goers fell into this category.  Last spring, our kids (deemed “in danger” by their sending organizations), were encouraged to leave their chosen cultures immediately.  The trauma of this evacuation affected my own Goers for months; even now they experience reverberations from their unexpected loss. Though they understood that caution was the cause of their departure, it was easy for them to feel cheated of the lives they had established.  Many had to move quickly and, unable to pack carefully, left sentimental and important things behind.  Now after being in the states for over a year, some are unable to return to their former homes and are grieving the loss of relationships and dreams. They are wondering what will become of churches they began. They have been forced to say goodbye to their old lives.

The time away made my Goers question themselves and God; “Was I not doing the work God assigned me there?” “Why would he bless our ministry and then not let us go back?”  “Are we really nonessential?”  These questions still hang in the air even as my Goers are abroad in a new place. Though I want to provide answers, I cannot.  And my heart hurts for my kids who have lost a life they loved.  I don’t understand God’s plan for this pandemic yet.  I can’t see how the gospel is advancing through a “pause” in international mission programs.  But I do know one thing as eternally true: Jesus is essential.

OUR ESSENTIAL SAVIOR

Though we may be nonessential workers in the critical infrastructure of history, Jesus is not.

Colossians 1 tells us, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created…He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things… by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Making peace with God came at a cost. The cost was Jesus’ life. We couldn’t work long enough or hard enough to reconcile with God, so Jesus worked in our place.

In Jesus all things hold together even as they seem to be falling apart.  Though our hearts resist his reign, and our minds misunderstand his ways, he continues to work out his purposes in the world.  We can join him in his work (and he uses us! And our kids!), but, like it or not, we are nonessential in the salvation of our souls. As the old hymn says, Jesus paid it all; our competence and abilities were not enough. Jesus is our Creator. Our Reconciler. Our Supreme Sacrifice. Jesus is our Essential Savior and The Most Essential Worker.  Let’s choose to trust in his work together.

“He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him.”

~Isaiah 59:16