We work hard. We do our best. We plan and encourage and practice.

In particular, I would guess, we work well when we think about God.

We want to–at least we want to want to–do everything we can to do what we think will make God happy. Many of us, when we stop to think about it, try to figure out how to have amazing worship events. We spend hours in prayer. We will give money regularly. We do it because we want God to be happy with us.

This came to me today while I was thinking about the sheep today, the ones that Jesus identifies in Matthew 25. I was thinking about their surprise at being told by Jesus that they had helped him in clear, specific, tangible ways.

Quickly, the story is that at the end of time, Jesus is sitting sorting people in the way that a shepherd works through a herd, separating the sheep he knows and loves from, in this case, goats. He puts the sheep in one group and says to them “you took care of me, I’ll take care of you.”

They are surprised because, they say, “we never saw you.”

And I realized that these are people who would have been trying to see Jesus, who have been looking for Him earnestly. And they were pretty sure that they never saw him. And now he is telling them that they actually touched him, actually helped him.

And they are surprised.

I’m wondering if these are people who helped people just because. It was no big deal to them to care for sick and hungry and thirsty and imprisoned people. It was just what they did, just what should be done.

It wasn’t as important to God as going to church, was it?