Consider the liver!

Jesus said “Consider the Lilies”, “think about the flowers”. Paul might have said “Consider the Liver”, “think about your internal organs” (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). The liver isn’t visible to us. It’s not one of the flashy up-front high-profile parts of the body like the hands or the eyes. Most of us probably don’t give our livers a second thought. And the liver isn’t one of the glamorous hero organs like the brain or the heart. Probably no one ever wrote a poem about the liver. But nevertheless the liver is essential.

 
I’m no doctor, but I think it’s safe to say that you would be in big trouble if you didn’t have a liver. Paul could have said, “without the liver, where would the filtering of the blood be?”

Many of the really indispensable parts of the body are ones which are mostly invisible to us and which, when all is going well, we don’t need to think about. You can live without a hand, but not without a liver.

So, even if our role in the church, our gifts, aren’t much thought or spoken about, if no one ever thanks us, and what we do might seem mundane or unexciting, it might be essential. We need the admin, and planning, and communications, and the finances and the cleaning and the looking after the buildings and the churchyard, and all the other activities I’ve missed out, as well as the more up front activities.