Phyllis Beveridge Nissila

royalty free wagon wheel image

Living on the West Coast of the United States, as I do, formerly known as the “Wild West,” one sees rusty, crusty old wagon wheels in many places. I saw some today.

Such wheels transported “Oregon Trail” pioneers from the decidedly more civilized Eastern and Midwestern U.S. during the nineteenth century. Some of the old, iconic Conestoga wagons hitched atop the wheels are now displayed in museums while others are slowly disintegrating on old farm lands, their skeletal remains hearkening the imagination back in time.

What brought the wheels to mind to share here was how the spokes affixed to their hub serve as a good visual representation of  Christian ministries affixed to Jesus Christ, He Who is the central figure of our salvation.

But these kind of wheels are not merely on display as artifacts of some old era. They are formed continually anew to transport another kind of migrant in every time period who seeks a better, in this case spiritual, land of opportunity, pioneering toward timeless Truth at another kind of trail’s end.

Whether today’s ministers–individual spokes, if you will–teach, preach, write, sing, pray, encourage, heal, or simply live out our lives in service to others or even just one other, each  God-ordained, Holy-Spirit-empowered Christian worker is a needful part of the whole, moving God’s plan of redemption for mankind toward, in this case, the eternal promised land.

That’s how we roll, you might say, as believers in Jesus Christ, so be encouraged in your calling.

For although God can use another or others to accomplish His will in this era, perhaps you, like Esther in the book named after her, “have come to your position” for such a time as this.

And God speed.