High Five for the work you do
Yesterday two young men showed up to wash our second story windows. They accomplished in an hour what would have taken me all day; (if I could climb a 25 foot ladder) our windows sparkled and the outside world glowed with clarity. How important is it to wash windows and do them well? Some would say not very. But I went online and gave this company Five Stars and praise for the boys who did the work.
Often it’s the exceptional and the sensational that receives the “Well Done!” The other day we watched a news segment about Bill and Melinda Gates who have spent more than a billion dollars helping 22,000 low income students of all races get to college and beyond – all expenses paid. Some were too emotional to respond to the interviewer. Beyond incredible!
Lately I’ve been inspired by Scriptures that mention “small and great” together. In God’s economy the playing field is profoundly level and you are rewarded whether you are great or small. I don’t have a billion dollars to give. I don’t even have a thousand. And yet I am favored by God:
He will bless those who fear the Lord small and great alike. (Ps. 115:13)
Artist Bonnie Liefer explained the image on her 2018 Easter card. See her work here. A sun bursting with little stars and big fireworks leaving the surface like “a series of glorious fireworks that happened when Christ burst out of the tomb … The stars keep shooting off as more people come to Christ, and more people show His glory, in tiny hidden ways as well as in the big, flashy ways as they show their trust in Him.”
In tiny hidden ways? I’d maybe like to be an atomic explosion. Maybe. But to realize the inclusive nature of “small and great alike” means we are in – however small or great, and the measure of our success is related to what we do with what we have. That’s always been the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, the way of a little boy’s lunch becoming food for thousands. We can either compare ourselves to the Gates and give up or recognize the choice to use what we do have to serve others. And so I move ahead in tiny flashes.
by Margie Haack