I recently began a novel titled Les Miserables. On the first page, the author introduces a character with the name of Monseigneur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel, who was the Bishop of Digne (Wow! What a mouthful) and spends much time describing him as charitable and faithful. One story recounts the Bishop’s brave determination to journey into a small community deep in the mountains that he hadn’t visited for three years, even though the trip was dangerous because of a group of robbers lurking along the way. He insisted on going because the people needed someone to “talk to them about God”, even though he was warned against it. In spite of the opposition and danger, he completes his mission and returns unscathed. After telling about the Bishop’s remarkable act of faith, the author says:
“Episodes such as this occurred only rarely. We report those of which we have knowledge; but in general he spent his life doing the same things at the same time, and a month of his year resembled an hour of his day.”
While memorable and exemplary, moments such as this dangerous journey into the mountains were the exception in the Bishop’s life, rather than the norm. The vast majority of his days were actually spent “filled with prayer, with the celebration of the offices, the giving of alms, the consoling of the afflicted, the tilling of his garden-plot; with brotherliness, frugality, hospitality, renunciation, trust, study and toil” (67). He did the same things, day in and day out.
Even though we admire and applaud the Bishop’s bravery, he would have been no less faithful had the opportunity for the trip never come or if the robbers were not present. In fact, in some ways his faithfulness is more so evident by his commitment to the monotonous and mundane aspects of his Christian responsibilities than the one-time feats of faith. However, history usually remembers individuals for their greatest accomplishments rather than commitment to the nitty-gritty.
Consider Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Luther posting his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle, Washington crossing the Delaware, and Neal Armstrong’s first step onto the moon. All are remembered because they did something noteworthy! For biblical examples, think of Noah building the Ark, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Elijah facing the prophets of Baal, and of course most memorably, Jesus going to the cross. Such remembrance is appropriate, inspiring, and even modeled for us in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11.
However, there is a danger with such spotlighting. If we only associate faithfulness with the most heroic and remarkable moments, we can begin to think our lives are less than faithful because we haven’t built any arks or called fire down from heaven. We can feel as though we need to do something big in order to prove ourselves faithful.
I recall a conversation with a friend in college who aspired to be a missionary in a foreign country. It didn’t appear to me that he was particularly involved with local ministry and discipleship, and it seemed naive to want to do ministry in a foreign context when he might not have been doing it here. While admiring his ambition, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking to do something big when God was asking him to do something small.
Consider the words of the hymn “Follow Me”, by Ira Stamphill:
O, Jesus if I die upon
A foreign field someday,
'Twould be no more than love demands,
No less could I repay,
"No greater love hath mortal man
Than for a friend to die"
These are the words
He gently spoke to me,
"If just a cup of water
I place within your hand
Then just a cup of water
Is all that I demand."
The speaker in the poem is willing to go to a foreign land and die as a martyr, but Jesus gently responds by saying all he wants him to do is give him a small drink of water. The Bishop and this hymn both remind us that our faithfulness is not defined by the amount of mountain moving moments in our lives. We’ll all likely have a few moments where we take “the path less traveled”, as Robert Frost put it, but the majority of our great acts of faith will probably be nothing too unordinary: attending a small group, making someone a meal, doing our Bible readings, or just simply showing up on a Sunday morning. Beyond the parts of our life that are explicitly “Christian” (as if we could compartmentalize our faith!) the rest of our lives are spent in the ordinary minutia of life such as doing the dishes and taking out the trash. Thankfully, our faithfulness is not so much about what is done as it is in the manner in which something is done.
For example, consider a passage from the classic work, Practicing the Presence of God:
“And it was observed, that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even uninterrupted composure and tranquillity of spirit. “The time of business,” said he, “does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess GOD in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”
The man described above was a monk named Brother Lawrence, who lived from 1614 to 1691. He spent much of his time working in the ordinary monastery kitchen, but he did so in an extraordinary way, as though he was in the presence of God. Similarly, Paul told Christian slaves, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). Brother Lawrence was faithful not by accomplishing a few great triumphs, but rather by going about his normal routines in a Godly way. Stanley Hauerwas, in his book Resident Aliens, says similarly:
“Ethics does not get much more Christian than this – an ordinary person living the Christian life before other ordinary people.”
I’m willing to bet your own personal heroes of faith aren’t all monks and martyrs but are rather ordinary people who influenced your life by doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way. Whether it was a Grandparent who made special effort to be a positive influence in your life, a kind widow at your church growing up, or your elementary bible school teacher who taught you the song about “the wise man who built his house on the rock”, they likely did ordinary things in faithful ways and so lived very faithful and influential lives. I by no means seek to discredit those who carry literal crosses or make exemplary sacrifices for the Kingdom of Heaven. Rather, I applaud, admire, and seek to emulate them. But I also want to give due credit to those forgotten saints of bygone days who didn’t make our history books but are still recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The vast majority of Christians throughout the ages haven’t done anything particularly unusual or extraordinary with their lives. They were born, maybe educated, worked, had a family, and died, all without slaying dragons! But they were nonetheless faithful.
Don’t get discouraged if you feel you’re not doing “big” things for God. Small good is actually big good! A regular habit of prayer is just as much a mark of faithfulness as one who “stops the mouth of lions” (Hebrews 11:33). Jesus himself said, “whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward” (Mark 9:41). If a Christian dies as one remembered not by humans but only by God, they have done something more memorable than we’ll ever know.
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