By Tammy Moeller, RN, Parish Nurse, United Methodist Church, Luverne"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ." I Corinthians 12:12"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." I Corinthians 12: 17Romans 12:5 "so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."Have you ever had to do the laundry? I have done countless loads in my life, and there are countless loads of laundry to go. There is a certain flow to laundry. If you don’t do the laundry, I’ll give you the specifics right here:First, you have to gather up the laundry. You have to make sure that there is a system in place in your household so that everyone is aware of "where to put the laundry when you need it cleaned." If you don’t have that system in place, you will need to gather up the laundry on your own, making more work for yourself.The next task is to sort the laundry into different colors, or different textures (depending on if there is a certain shirt/pants that needs to be laundered in a special care load). When you presort the laundry, you also have to pre-treat those items that have a stain on them so that it will actually get cleaned in the cycle.Continuing on, you need to bring the laundry to your washing machine, and select the appropriate cycle for it to be on. For example, if you are washing whites, you may select either a hot or warm wash with a warm or cold rinse. Then comes the step where you need to add the detergent and the fabric softener — or the bleach if you are a real perfectionist. You need to follow your washing machine’s instructions on how much to add, and where to add it. If you complete these steps appropriately, you will find that your clothes came out of the washing machine clean. Once that occurs, you will have to dry your laundry. There may be certain items that cannot go into the dryer, and you will have to dry these either on a rack, or some sort of system that you have developed for the purpose of air-drying. In a large nutshell, you have completed a portion of the laundry. But it doesn’t end here. Those tasks are relatively easy if you do it for any length of time. The toughest part of "doing the laundry" is folding those clothes and putting them in the correct places within your household. This action may take longer than any of the other steps.What if one of those steps did not occur? What if you forgot the fabric softener? What if you just forgot about the clothes in the washing machine for one or two days? Yeah, I know that you have all done it. It isn’t a pretty smell, is it? There are steps that must be followed, and if they aren’t, disaster may be the end result.So it is with the body of Christ. We, who are called by Christ to serve Him, are a part of His plan. We are His body. We are his hands, his feet, his arms, his ears, his eyes, his mouth, and his heart. We are called to help each other, whether "others" may know Christ or not. We are called to bring others to Christ. We are called to go out there and bring them in our church doors — to teach them about the good news of Jesus Christ, and to show them that Christ is alive in our every day lives. How does laundry tie into all of this? If one of the steps in laundry is missing, there is potential for disaster, right? So it is with the body of Christ. If one part of Christ’s body decides not to function — the task of bringing others to Christ and helping others daily, does not get completed. And because these tasks are not completed, we are not showing others that we are living our everyday lives for Christ.The things in which Christ calls you to do may seem unimportant right now. Do you see now how untrue this really is? Whether you volunteer to help out in a Sunday service nursery, volunteer to be a Sunday School teacher, lead a Bible study, work for the local food shelf, help out with a potluck in your church, donate to an organization that helps those in need, visit those who live alone, donate to your local church, visit those in a nursing home, and more — YOU are important, as you — yes, little you — are an integral part of the body of Christ.
