Janitors

Devotion for the Week...

We have been the janitors for our church for 10 years or so and for much of that time the boys have helped in some capacity, too. One day several years ago, we were driving to the church to clean and in response to a complaint one of the boys had made, I pointed out that they sure liked the things we were able to do as a family because of the money we earned cleaning the church. From the backseat, Nathan said, “But we don’t get money for cleaning the church.” 

“Oh, yes we do,” I said with a laugh. “I hate cleaning so we wouldn’t be doing this by ourselves every week if we weren’t getting paid for it.” 

He was only small at the time, so he didn’t yet understand the concept of money or of being paid to do work. He also never saw the cheque we were paid with, so there was no way he could have known about it. Maybe he thought we took care of the church out of the goodness of our hearts?? I love remembering those funny moments from when they were little.

As adults, we understand the concept of being paid for work, but salvation isn’t a payment for things we have done. Instead, it is a gift from God, who does give it to us out of the goodness of His heart. “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Isn’t it a relief to know that we don’t have to earn our salvation? If we really think about it, we know that nothing we could do would ever be worthy of it anyway. Actually, the things we do are the reason we need salvation in the first place! So God, in His great mercy, gives us salvation as a free gift, available to anyone and everyone who simply believes in Jesus.