My family and I go to the Ohio Renaissance Festival for most weekends of the months of September and October. It is a place where we can play dress up/make believe and live in a world of make believe and fantasy (I love the fantasy and sci-fi genre in movies, TV, and literature). My fiancee loves to dress in long dresses and corsets and I like to dress up as a Celtic Warrior. Anyway, at the festival they have different shows to watch and one of them that has been around forever is the “mud show”.
One of the mud shows that are presented is a classic retelling of Beowulf. They do it in all of it’s glory where the actors all are caked in mud by the end of the show.
In the classic medieval poem about the hero Beowulf defeating the evil Grendal and his mother Heindall:
Then Halfdane’s son presented Beowulf with a gold standard as a victory gift, an embroidered banner; also breast-mail and a helmet; and a sword carried high, that was both precious object and token of honor.7
Beowulf was given a reward for defeating Grendal. When Jesus comes back or we go home to be with Him when all things are restored on the other side and accounts are settled, we will receive our reward. Jesus writes in the Sermon on the Mount:
Advertisements Share this:11 “You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me.12 Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. – Matthew 5:11-12 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew5:11-12&version=CSB
The Apostle Paul writes to those that are in Colossae:Slaves, obey your human masters in everything. Don’t work only while being watched, as people-pleasers, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people,knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ. – Colossians 3:22-24 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians3:22-24&version=CSB
Even though we may be falsely accused because of our faith in Christ, or feel like our work does not mean much, yet as each person works into the Lord they will be richly rewarded in the life to come.Eldredge writes:
Reward, reward, reward—it fills the pages of both Testaments. Saint Paul expected to be rewarded for his service to Christ, as have the saints down through the ages. Patrick, that mighty missionary to the Irish, prayed daily, “In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward. . . . So that there may come to me an abundance of reward.”10
In conclusion, our kids, Lily and Kayli got to take part of the knighting ceremony where they were given a new name by the Queen (Queen Elizabeth). Lily loves swimming and water, so she was given the title, Princess Mermaid Lily. That was part of her reward for the day just as we will be rewarded at the end of the age.
