Positive, Constructive Work
Positive, Constructive Work
In our spiritual life and in our service, we must care about works of building and positive works. Yet while we are building our lives and the lives of people, cooperating with the Holy Spirit in the work, Satan intervenes to present negatives to us so that we may be occupied with them and distracted from our constructive spiritual work.
But the wise person is the one who does not allow negatives to occupy him or hinder him from his positive work. Therefore, he continues steadily in the work of building and distances himself from negative matters that draw him into endless conflicts, in which he loses his spirituality, loses his service, and his constructive work is hindered.
In truth, the Lord Christ Himself is the One who laid down for us the principle of positive work and not being occupied with negatives.
During the period of His incarnation on earth, when He began His ministry, there were very, very many errors in the society in which He worked. There were errors surrounding the leaders: the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the lawyers, the priests, and the elders of the people. There were also other errors surrounding Herod and Pilate, the tax collectors and their chiefs, and many others besides.
The Lord Christ did not waste His time holding all these people accountable; rather, He answered them when they confronted Him. He occupied Himself with positive work: with preaching and teaching, with compassion toward the sick, the sorrowful, and the needy. He continually went about “doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38). “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people” (Matt. 4:23). And He said: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
He worked and occupied Himself with teaching people and caring for them: “He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). He preached on the mountain, among the fields, on the road, in deserted places, in houses, on the shore of the lake—everywhere—showing compassion and care for people, although “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:58).
He did not waste His time on the problem of how tax collectors collected taxes unjustly from people, nor did He occupy Himself with what Annas and Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin were doing. Rather, His concern was the people: how to teach them and shepherd them. Thus, He practically presented to us that proverb which says:
Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle.
Yes, if we light a candle, the darkness disappears without us fighting it and without hindering our positive work because of it.
But perhaps one of you may say: Yet the Lord Christ rebuked the scribes and Pharisees and said to them: “Blind guides… for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites… How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” (Matt. 23:13, 14, 24, 33). He also said to the priests: “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it” (Matt. 21:43). He stood against the Sadducees and the lawyers (Matt. 22). He also cleansed the temple, overturned the tables of the money changers, and said: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves!” (Matt. 21:13). So how can we say that negatives did not occupy Him?
The Lord Christ did this in the final week, in order to change the leadership so that the Church would not remain under their authority. All this occurred between Palm Sunday and two days before Passover (Matt. 26:2), just days before Golgotha. Changing the religious leadership was necessary before His crucifixion.
But throughout the years of His ministry, all His concern was positive work in shepherding the people and forming new leadership to whom He would hand over the keys of the kingdom. During those years, He did not fight those who were corrupt; rather, they were the ones who fought Him, and He responded to them to explain the truth to them and to those who heard them.
There is also a wonderful parable that the Lord Christ presented to us about the kingdom, the parable of the wheat and the tares, and the spiritual teaching it carries.
He said that an enemy came “and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way” (Matt. 13:25). The servants suggested pulling out the tares from the field, but He answered them: “No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest” (Matt. 13:29–30). On the day of harvest, the tares will be gathered and burned.
Yes, my brothers, your work is not to uproot the tares, lest you uproot your wheat with them. Your work is to grow as wheat, and when the great day of harvest comes, the Lord will look at your fields and find them full of wheat. He will gather from them thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold, and His barns will be filled with grain.
This is the beneficial positive work. But if you occupy your time with gathering tares and pulling them out of the ground, you may exhaust your nerves, lose your spirituality, and fall into countless errors—like those who, in the name of reform, used methods of insults, condemnation, and defamation, falling into anger, irritability, hatred, destruction, shouting, raised voices, and causing others to stumble by what they say.
While pulling out the tares, they themselves became tares, because the nature of tares is exactly what they were doing. Their spirituality was lost in the intensity of the conflict. Their service stopped and became a stumbling block. They offered neither example nor reform. They experienced—and people experienced with them—the wisdom of what the Lord Christ said: “No, lest you uproot the wheat with the tares while you gather them.” If the Lord said this about real tares, what then shall be said about those who, because of weak vision, consider wheat to be tares, become zealous to uproot the wheat, and leave only tares in the field? Then the owner of the field finds nothing left to harvest and store in his barns.
Therefore, be wheat, and beware of being occupied with gathering tares.
Those who are obsessed with uprooting tares lose their inner peace, lose humility and meekness, and also lose peace with people. You always find them angry and distressed, venting their anger on everyone. They speak only about mistakes and black points, portray the situation as dark and gloomy, and turn into sparks of fire that burn everything they encounter with harshness and violence. While they think about the sins of others, they forget their own sins.
But you, O man of God, occupy yourself with building the kingdom in meekness and calmness, in love for all, and in humility of heart.
Your positive work as a servant is to build. As Saint Paul the Apostle said: “Let all things be done for edification” (1 Cor. 14:26). Know that the one who builds always ascends upward, while the one who destroys always descends downward.
Beware, as you uproot tares from the ground, lest you uproot the wheat that is in you and in your hearers.
Sow wheat everywhere, and carefully choose the seeds you scatter. Sow love in every heart. Speak a word of consolation and hope, a word of benefit. Even the wicked—try to win them with love. This does not mean submitting to falsehood or flattering it, moving from one extreme to another.
Do not waste your energies on negatives. Satan is ready to present you with negatives every day to occupy you with them. He is ready to present rumors and news every day, problems, conflicts, and troubles. He reveals secrets and thoughts which, if you give them a place in your mind, will weary your nerves and psyche. Say to yourself: What do I have to do with all this? My time is consecrated to my service. I am not permitted to take God’s time and give it to discussing negatives.
I would like to give you an example from what happened in our recent history at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.
There were severe deficiencies in service. There were no preachers in churches and no educated priests. As a result, denominations began to be established and to grow at the expense of the Church. Divisions and internal conflicts increased. Some used methods of insults, criticism, and defamation. Others entered into conflict with the Church that reached the courts, and huge sums of money were spent on lawsuits. Others continued to weep over the bad situation.
All of this was of no benefit. The Church did not benefit from criticism and defamation, nor from division and lawsuits, nor from weeping. So how did reform happen?
Reform happened through the positive work in which Habib Girgis, the leader of service in the twentieth century, believed.
He was not occupied with all the errors of his time. Rather, he began to work. He dug a foundation and placed in it two stones: the Seminary and Sunday Schools. He continued building, and the structure rose. A large number of servants were formed, working in preaching and teaching—in churches, associations, Sunday Schools, and villages—while he sang in his heart to the Lord, saying: “As for Your people, let them be by blessing thousands of thousands and tens of thousands doing Your will.”
He did not criticize the deficiency; rather, he worked to supply the Church with what it lacked.
He found that the Church lacked preaching, to the extent that many priests were reading from sermon books without ability or competence in preaching. He did not criticize this or fill the world with lamentation over the Church. Instead, he began preparing preachers and servants, and he was able to make seminarians establish preaching associations that founded eighty-four branches in Cairo, Giza, and their suburbs.
He found that children and youth had no one to teach them. He did not criticize the Church for this nor wound it. Instead, he established Sunday Schools, which spread everywhere. He began writing books to be taught in public schools and in church education schools.
When he found Protestant hymns beginning to infiltrate and find a place in some meetings, he began composing hymns to Church melodies. Thus, he served in every field.
Now people have forgotten all the negatives that existed, and what remains fixed in their memory is the positive, constructive work that Habib Girgis accomplished, through which he presented a lesson.
Here I recall a phrase mentioned in the creation account:
“It was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep” (Gen. 1:2). What did the Lord do? Scripture does not say that God cursed the darkness and the desolation. Rather, it says: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” God did not say, “Let there be no darkness,” but rather: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). “And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:4).
God calls us to be light. He even said: “You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). If we become light, the darkness will vanish on its own, without us cursing the darkness.
Constructive work is the work that remains for us and for others. Positive work is all gain, with no loss for us or for others.
I say this to you because I have seen on the path of life people who look with eyes that see nothing but darkness. They do not see the white points, nor do they speak about them. They search for darkness in order to focus on it and criticize it.
In all this, they lose their cheerfulness, meekness, and inner peace. Their talk about darkness makes their listeners lose peace as well and lose their joy, seeing the earth only as desolate and void. The eyes of such critics do not see the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters, nor do they hear the voice of God saying: “Let there be light,” and there was light (Gen. 1:3).
Truly, how beautiful is the saying of Scripture:
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings good tidings of good, who proclaims salvation” (Isa. 52:7; Nah. 1:15).
The New Testament began with angels proclaiming salvation and carrying glad tidings, in which the angel says: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10).
May you, therefore, in your service, carry to people joyful news. The people have enough of their own pains and need a word of consolation that gladdens them and gives them hope. Open for them, then, windows of light. And if you find no light at all—God forbid—then be you the light for them. Be people of positive, constructive work, and present to the people through your work and service what brings them joy.
Be like the dove that carried to Noah a green olive leaf: “So Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth” (Gen. 8:11).
And to the next issue, if the grace of the Lord wills and we live.
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