June, 2025 – Faithful Living® ~
I want to be an eyeball but I think God has assigned me to be a hangnail within the Body of Christ.
Who wouldn’t want to be an eyeball? This sensory engineering miracle according to EarthsLab.com has 137 million light sensitive cells [130 million rod shaped cells for black and white vision, and 7 million cone shaped cells for color vision] in one square inch located along the back of the eye called the retina. These cells transmit what the eye is seeing into electrical impulses via neurons through the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the brain. Our eyes contain 70 percent of the body’s sensors and can deal with 1.5 million simultaneous messages. Connected with 6 ocular muscles, the eye is attached to the skull’s orbital socket.
Take a close look in a mirror and check out the sheer beauty of the colored part of your eye. Called the iris, no one has the exact figuration of color like yours. This remarkable amenity is as unique as you are! Pretty special, huh?
To everyone called by our Lord and accepted into the Household of Faith, God bestows on each Christ follower various gifts and responsibilities to help build and edify His Church. The Apostle Paul describes this phenomenon using the metaphor of a person’s body in the following verses from his first letter to the new Corinthian group of believers.
“I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body. “would that make it so? If Ear said “I’m not beautiful like Eye, transparent and expressive. I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.”
““But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?”
“The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.” 1 Corinthians 12: 14-26 MSG
“Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!” 1 Peter 4: 7-11 MSG
Demonstrating God’s presence and power through humbly working in unity alongside our brothers and sisters in the faith…people around us may capture a bit of the love we share serving with thankful hearts. In so doing, the Church continues to be strengthened and encouraged.
Please don’t waste any more time coveting the gifts given to others. They have their assignments and we have ours. God knows what He is doing. Pay attention to the gifts and abilities that God has bestowed upon you. Cheerfully amplify them so the Church, as a body comprised of many members, can properly function as our Lord intended.
With deep gratitude therefore, I will keep trying to be the best hangnail humanly possible, to the glory of the Father! Embrace your gifts too. Jesus is counting on us!