Two women will be grinding flour together at the mill; one will be taken, the other left. Luke 17:35 NLT
Read that again slowly. Notice two women are doing the exact same work with their hands. Same location, same task, same hour. And yet Jesus says, “One will be taken, the other left.”
It Is Not About the Grinding
Grinding grain into flour is hard, repetitive, physical labor. Two women could do it side by side for years and look, from the outside, completely indistinguishable from each other: same calluses, same posture, same rhythm. But Jesus isn’t interested in the rhythm or conditions of their hands. He sees what each woman carries in her heart as she works.
The Heart Not The Hands
This is the part of the passage we shouldn’t rush past: Jesus isn’t grading their output. God isn’t asking either one to do more. He’s asking something much simpler and much harder: what is the condition of the heart? We can show up to the same job every day either resigned to it or given over to it as an offering. The work itself won’t tell anyone which one is true. Only God knows the heart.
Here’s a question worth carrying into our tasks this week: as we do the things we were going to do anyway — the emails, the dishes, the meetings, the same grain at the same mill — how devoted is our heart? Not our hands. Our heart.
Two people can work at the same task their whole lives. Only one of them might be doing it for Him.
Lord, You see past every task to the heart behind it. Where my hands have kept moving but my heart has drifted, draw it back. Let the work I do today, however ordinary, be an offering to You — not because of what I accomplish, but because I’m doing it for You. Amen.
*For those of you who prayer walk, as you walk, ponder the question, “How’s your heart?.” Take note of what the Holy Spirit reveals along the way.
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