Why Those Letters Don't Mean That Much

And so, play the trumpets! Yours truly has entered the workforce. Yes, I am now on "the grind." I've turned in my tasseled hat for a blue collar. Just call me a regular working man. The weirdest part of this whole thing is that I've spent much of my life working so that I could one day make money, and now that there's a regular paycheck coming in, I'm all like, "OOH, MONEY!?"

The even funnier part is that, just as I've made my dramatic exit from college, my brother has recently re-entered. He's going back to get his Master's Degree as a Nurse Practitioner. 

*oooOOOoooh*

Titles have always fascinated me. Now, I get to put the initials RN at the end of my name (a liberty I took full advantage of when buying plane tickets recently. Well, how else will they know if I don't tell them!?). Soon enough, my brother will get to put ARNP at the end of his. (Adult Registered Nurse Practitioner) One day, I hope to be able to as well. Today, I sat in a work meeting and made sure to dress my best because I knew the CNO (Chief Nursing Officer) would be there (I wore a blazer and slacks!). 

So what's the deal? Why all the hubbub when it comes to letters of the alphabet and titles? Well, in my case, I really respect the work that it takes for people to earn those titles. In some cases, it takes a lifetime to get a couple of initials at the end of your name, and I'm all about people working hard to get to that place. 

"Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’" (Amos 7)

I've been going through the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament lately and in my journey, I've bumped into Amos. Amos was a shepherd and a farmer who told the people of Israel to turn from their wicked ways of oppressing the poor and practicing injustice and to turn to the God who could restore them to righteousness.

Maybe you glazed over that first part because it didn't sound that important: Amos was a shepherd. A farmer. No alphabet soup after his name. No fancy title. But the words he spoke were immortalized for, well, eternity. What mattered here was not his background, his past successes, or his climbing up the ladder of Ancient Middle-East power. He had no status on which to stand so that he could tell everyone to listen to him, but he did it anyway, because God gave him a whole different kind of platform.

Look, titles are great. There's usually a lot of earned respect for a man with a title, and rightfully so. But friend, the Kingdom of God has very little to do with your title and a lot more to do with your testimony. God doesn't want people with status, He wants people with a story. Which is everyone. So what does this mean? Two things:

Friend, wherever God is giving you the medium in which to tell the world how your story has collided with Almighty God's, do it. Even if it's out of your pay grade. And if you ever avoid the opportunity to learn from someone who doesn't have any letters after their name, shame on you. You might be missing a little shepherd's big words.

Don't forget, it was a Nobody from a nowhere town that caused the world to follow.

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