In my observations, many people think that they do not have anything to contribute to a church or society because they are not ‘trained’ or ‘gifted’ for that specific task. I was reading Nehemiah today and came across a little note about a Hananiah in 3:8

… Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, repaired, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall.

This guy made perfume, and was not afraid to get his hands dirty and work shoulder to shoulder with his people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. I doubt Wall Building 101 and Masonry 211 were standard classes during his perfumery schooling.

I think we can learn from his example that if there is work to be done in the church, we have a calling and responsibility to step up and help out. Back in verse 5 we read:

And next to them the Tekoites repaired, but their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord.

Who do we want to be like? The faithful perfumer or the nobles? I hope that I will be willing to roll up my sleeves and pitch in.

If you follow my twitter feed you would have seen that our return from Ithaca last Saturday was eventful. Today our fridge is finally fixed (again). This time they replaced the motherboard (a known problem with the model).

Camille mentioned that it was like living having only manna for 5 days because we could not store things that needed to be kept cold. We could only gather/buy what we needed for that day. It got me wondering if in a Costco culture, do we really believe that God will meet our daily needs?

Note: The manna analogy seems to fail if you associate Ithaca with Egypt (though I felt a bit like I was in bondage there while a grad student). Are we wandering in the desert of Maryland right now? Where is the promised land?