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Our Weekly Devotional

Workplace Legacies

Thursday, June 12, 2014 • Randy Kilgore • General
"I remember!" she said as the nurse from China told me a story nearly five decades old. Her eyes lit up and her words rushed out as she talked about a working Christian whose legacy still echoed in her world.

"For to me, to live is Christ, to die is gain." --Philippians 1:21

     "I remember!" she said as this nurse from China told me a story nearly five decades old.  Her eyes lit up and her words rushed out as she talked about a working Christian whose legacy still echoed in her world.

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     Bill Wallace understood in 1935 what some of us still wrestle to grasp: The gifts that make us useful to others also make us useful to God. Wallace was a promising surgeon in Knoxville, Tennessee when he felt God calling him to take his skills to China.  The decision would cost him wealth, security, and eventually his life.   Still he went; not because it was a romantic gesture;  not because he couldn't serve God as a doctor in Knoxville; but because it was the place in the wall where God wanted him.

     Somewhere in our recent past, we working Christians have let the idea of sacrifice creep out of our vocabulary when we talk about our faith.  We search for passages that promise us peace, and pray earnestly for security and even prosperity.  We move from place to place looking for the perfect church, the perfect job, the perfect home, the perfect spouse; all while paying lip service to Jesus Christ as Savior but not seeking His direction in our search.  We forget He is also Lord.

     It is indeed difficult in some places to serve God at work.  It is indeed uncomfortable to reflect His character and His glory when workers on the assembly line around you are swearing and defaming His very name.  It is indeed a sacrifice to tell polished coworkers you believe in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.  It is indeed hard to tell sincere and moral friends and family members that living a good life isn't enough; that only through Jesus Christ can a relationship with God be restored, and eternal life with Him secured.

     Yes, indeed, but that's exactly the place in the wall where God is calling us to serve today, this very moment.  It is not merely for now that we live for Him, but for the legacy of hope we leave in the minds of those who meet us.

     Bill Wallace went to China in the 1930's.  He braved language barriers, longings for family, Japanese bombers and bullets, all to serve in his role as a surgeon. He wasn't a great speaker, in fact, he had trouble with the language.  But his service and his words mixed on the job to win the hearts of a people who had little reason to listen-until his labors gave them that reason!   

     In 1951, the Communists swept up mainland China, and placed Wallace in prison.  No one, not one person, would stand up and back the false charges they trumped up against him.  When he was killed in the prison, and buried without a service or headstone, the people he served braved persecution to secretly erect a monument to him.  Thirty-three years later, as Dr. Wallace's remains were returned to his family, three Chinese doctors secretly asked to see the ashes of their friend. One touched them in a gesture of respect still deeply evident.

     Five nurses from around the globe gathered at a cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1998 to honor that surgeon they met a half-century before when they were young Chinese nursing students.  At the cemetery where Wallace rests, they reproduced the monument built in China to remember the man. On both monuments, the words were the same: "For me to live is Christ."

     The way you close the deal today, the way you pack those boxes, the way you handle that employee, the way you price your product, the way you tend the patient, the way you teach the child, the way you do whatever you do today leaves a residue of remembrance in the lives of those who see you.

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     "I remember!" she said, and then she told me a story about a simple doctor whose faithful service changed her eternity long ago.  It wasn't his death she discussed, but his life!

     What do people remember of us?

--Randy Kilgore

Reprinted with permission from Made to Matter: Devotions for Working Christians by Randy Kilgore: Discovery House Publishers 2008

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