A Great and Noble Task- Part One

What do you fear, my lady? "A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire."

 -Aragon to Eowyn in Lord of the Rings.

Who hasn’t felt this way?  To feel the need to accomplish something worthwhile and lasting? I think all of us wish to accomplish something that will impact the world as we know it. To feel our lives have played a valuable and key role, not only in the lives around us, but in the lives of people we’ve never met. We long to accomplish great and noble tasks.

I think this desire is placed in every heart; to play a valuable role in an adventure and know that the story couldn’t have been completed without us. Why were we created this way? With a longing to accomplish a great and noble task when it seems like most people never do? We want to change the world and yet nothing ever seems to change. Where is the glory, the excitement, the feeling of accomplishment? We pray for God to show where he wants us so we can begin our great task of saving the world with him and yet it seems like the assignment is never given. Live goes on just as it always has and our grandiose dreams fall along the way side. Once in a while we remember them and try to pick them up again but they never go anywhere. We find we’re stuck in the drudgery of life forever plodding onward all the while seemingly watching others sail on towards better and brighter dreams.

            Helen Keller once uttered these powerful words, “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” Amazing words to live by, but the problem is I don’t long to do accomplish small tasks; I want the great and noble ones. The ones people hear about, read about, and remember long afterwards. Not some piddly everyday boring ones and yet God is calling me to be faithful in the small things. 

Here’s the thing:  I hate the small things. I just want to skip them and move on to bigger and better things, but I’m beginning to understand that the small things can be just as important as the big ones. Just because they’re not noticed doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile; sometimes the small things must be accomplished in order for the big things to come about. 

            In Ephesians 2:10 (NIV) Paul tells us that, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God has tasks for each one of us to accomplish. Whether they are big or small isn’t what’s important, what is important is the fact he’s called us to them. Sometimes we feel that our task is unimportant and unneeded, but if God has called us to it it’s more than likely more important than we realize. 

I am reminded of this every time I think of the epiglottis. The epiglottis is a small flap in your throat that acts as like a trapped door in order to stop food, liquids, and salvia from getting into your trachea. If we didn’t have this small, unnoticed flap, food and liquids would quickly accumulate in our lungs making the chances of asphyxiating much, much higher.

Another great illustration are the brakes on your car. Obviously your brakes are a very important part of operating your car. Without them your chances of getting into an accident blossoms exponentially. When you get in your car and start driving you trust that the person who worked on your car did their job and did it well, right? But what if the day you brought your car in the person fixing them decided they were tired of doing the same thing day after day. So instead of thoroughly doing their job they did just the bare minimum to get by. It wasn’t like their job was all that important after all. I mean people get their brakes fixed every day, right? It wasn’t some big exiting thing; and yet, in the long term, it was. If the mechanic doesn’t do his job correctly he could cause your death and several others. It only takes one person to forever change the life of another.

Think about the long reaching effects of this one man’s (or woman’s) decision. It has consequences that reach far beyond themselves. Still think the small things are unimportant? Sure they’re not glamorous or even fun most of the time, but they’re still so important. What we do every day affects the world around us even if we can’t see how our tasks could ever impact society or even another’s life. The epiglottis is unseen, unheard, and unnoticed, but its role is still vitally important.

We might think our roles in life small inconsequential but the smallest unseen things can make the biggest differences in someone's life; differences we may never know about. One of the greatest preachers of history (Charles Spurgen) was brought to the Lord by a shoemaker who took the place of the minister on a snowy Sunday morning. Do you think we know his name today? No, we don’t, but by bringing one man to the Lord, he brought thousands. Or what about the man who brought Billy Graham to the Lord? I bet there are very few people who could name him off the top of their head. We all want to make our mark on history but for many of us our mark may be more the subtle quiet mark left by an ordinary person living out the small tasks given by God in great ways.

Each morning awake up the reminder that words you speak and the actions you live out may mean more to a passing stranger than you will ever know in this life. So don’t give up on the small things because the everyday actions of an ordinary life may very well change lives.

-Part Two coming soon