Our Magnum Opus

Reading: 1 Thessalonians

I realized something the other day. If I videotaped my teaching sessions, and made my handouts into a book, I’d have more credibility with some people. For the most part, the only difference between what I do and what the bulk of the gurus of the modern mentoring/discipleship/Bible Study crowd is a skinny shining disc, and a publisher’s name on a book spine.

Today I also learned a new word (http://www.jewelsofencouragement.com/2011/12/lets-hear-it-for-opuscule.html ). It’s opuscule. My spell checker doesn’t recognize it as a word, but it is. Opuscule means a minor or small work, literary or musical.

I do a lot of opusculating in the literary sense–lots and lots of minor works. I’ll never have a CD and no publisher is going to come looking for me. But none of that is the bottom line of life. What is that “bottom line” is Paul’s prayer for the believers at Thessalonica as recorded for us in 1 Thessalonians 3:12, 13, “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones” (NIV).

Paul’s goal for the Thessalonians is more like a Magnum Opus (great/greatest work). While I opusculate in some areas of my life, I pray that my character is, by the grace of God, becoming an opus of mind-boggling magnitude. In the end, that will be what pleases God and a work of eternal value.