Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

My girlfriend and I are both elementary school teachers, so the summer is a great time for us to get some much needed R&R. It’s also a great time for us to reflect on the previous school year, as we consider what went well and what didn’t. While the content we teach is different (she teaches third grade ELA/writing and I teach music), we’ve both expressed similar feelings about the challenges that come with working in the classroom, especially in regards to how much time and energy we invest in our jobs. 

Passion towards anything requires continuous sacrifice. I’ve just completed my third year of teaching, and while the efficiency of the work increases with each passing year, the amount of investment never seems to decrease. The time that is saved naturally from simply getting better at my job is taken up by a new project or initiative, or a new ensemble that I want to start, or some other thing. That’s the job though, and I enjoy it, because I enjoy investing in my work. 

Investment isn’t something that is unique to our work. We all have things that we value, from careers and hobbies to the people that we surround ourselves with. 

Around this time a year ago, I found a new love in crocheting, and for a while, you couldn’t part me from my crochet hooks. You wouldn’t need me to tell you that it was something important to me either. Over the course of a few weeks, I managed to crank out a couple stroller blankets, coasters for my coffee table, and a handful of self designed crosses. The quantity of creations was more than enough to prove that I had found a new passion. 

You can look at anybody and probably guess what they care about by how much time they put into it. So what does it look like when we invest intentionally in our relationship with God and his callings?

Part of that summer reflection I’ve been doing has shown me how easy my investment portfolio leaves out the things required for intentional investment in my faith. And again, it’s easy to spot the things we care about just by looking at the actions that we display.

If you have a friend that you care about, how do you invest in them? You call them and spend time with them. You probably check in on them regularly, and make sure to show them that they are important to you. Our relationship and the work we do for God is very similar. Jesus tells us in Luke that we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”, a call to invest totally in our connection with Him. This connection can’t be established by our weekly attendance at church on Sunday, but by our daily attendance to the presence of God in our lives. 

Through reading of scripture, through prayer, and through the sharing of our faith with others, we can provide the same kind of intention that you would give a dear friend. 

A part of my morning routine is to record a good morning message and prayer to send to a dear friend of mine. We’ve kept this routine up for the better part of a year and a half. While we don’t typically get to message each other while on vacation (as I am right now), I took some time to record one this morning and send it to her. Later on we both shared how important that intentional investment has become to us. God feels the same way about our relationship with Him.

In Ephesians, we’re reminded that “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them”. I doubt that we could justify to anybody that we value the work we do without being able to show it in some way. I doubt we can honestly justify to ourselves that we value and honor the calling of Jesus to do good works without showing that we have in fact invested in those good things. 

What things and people in your life do you invest in? What does that investment look like? Is God one of those investments? God created us not to be stagnant, but to be intentional. I pray that He’d help me be more intentional about my own investments in Him, and I hope you’ll join me in that prayer.