We all have lists, to-do lists. Lists at home and lists at work.
Maybe you’re thinking about your list right now. Sometimes we get on a list by mistake. Sometimes we don’t want to be on a list, like a juror’s list or on America’s most wanted.
Other times you do want to be on a list, like on the manifest plane list out of Afghanistan or on Schindler’s list. Regardless of how many are stuck in Afghanistan, they’re just not names on a list at the State Dept. The worried women and girls are not just meaningless people.
Oscar Schindler was a WW II industrialist and a member of the Nazi party. Originally, he saw the moneymaking potential of an enamelware factory of 1,700 workers, a thousand of whom were Jewish.
Later, he had a deep change of heart and began protecting his Jewish workers by bribing SS officials with lavish gifts to keep his Jewish employees alive regardless of the cost.
Towards the end of the war, Schindler made a list of over 1,200 Jewish workers who were relocated to another factory in western Poland in order to save their lives from certain death in the concentration camps. Until the end of the war, he continued to bribe officials until he spent his life fortune.
If your name was on that list, you are not only grateful, but ALIVE! Today, there are over seven thousand living descendants from Schindler’s list.
The Apostle Paul also had a list in Romans 16 that at first glance doesn’t seem all that inspiring. It was a list of people that helped him in ministry and life. They were not just a list of names. They were those he was thankful for, people he remembered.
People that mattered to him! They were names written on his heart, not just names on a list, names of people we wouldn’t otherwise know existed!
The names read off at the 911 Memorial are not just names on a list
The Viet Nam War Memorial wall has over fifty thousand names, but they are not just names on a wall to those who linger around leaving poems, touching and kissing the names on the wall, they are family. They matter.
There are millions who think they don’t matter and feel they are no longer needed, useful or wanted. If that, be you, you would be wrong!
Paul had a list and so does God
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart. Jeremiah 1:5
God knows your life story, your work, your joys, every tear you’ve shed When you trust Christ, He will never leave or forsake you and writes your name down in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Rev. 21:27). You are graven into the palms of his hands. You are the Apple of His eye. If God had a wallet your picture would be in it. If He had a fridge your picture would be on it. He’d carve your name on a tree.
Who is on Your List?
Paul commended his friends publicly in Romans 16. He honored them in simple words, no bouquets, no trophies, but straightforward terms. Our love doesn’t need to be shown in spectacular ways but is best expressed in authentic simple ways.
Why not tell people how much they matter to you and when you do, they’ll appreciate it! Don’t save the kind words for the eulogy, say them now!
Every life needs a cheering section, every life needs a shoulder to lean on, everyone needs prayer. Every life needs to hear, “Don’t give up!” EVERY LIFE NEEDS TO HEAR, “I LOVE YOU!” It can make a difference no matter how little you think you contribute.
When people get that they matter to us it can change a life, a family, restore a relationship. Now, go ahead and make someone’s day!
