Nothing big? Perhaps not

A little while ago I was having a sort out (I’m always having them) and found the battered old diary I used to write as a teenager (painted black with a gold buckle and lock – the key long since lost).  I stumbled across the telling account of a particular incident I had long forgotten about.

A bowl of oranges sat on one of the long red tables of the girls’ boarding school I attended and we were sitting down to our evening meal. I reached for my orange and began to peel it, only to find it was blue inside. Moaning and whingeing, I complained loudly to the whole table of my sad lot. At the end of the table sat an old teacher, Miss Stirte her name was; she was well past retirement age. ‘Here you are, Julia,‘ she said without any fuss. ‘Have mine. ‘

My teenage diary told my story. Tail between my legs, I was profoundly convicted by her unassuming response to my need – and ashamed, too, of my loud, ungrateful complaining. She would never have known her simple action halted me in my tracks and I’m sure she is no longer alive. But I had observed, learned of, a truly honourable way: that of quiet and small, unheralded acts of self-sacrifice.

Now, if someone would ask, what is your call? I might say, “‘Nothing big; I’d just like to keep doing quiet, small, probably unnoticed  things that perhaps may cost me a little but others will benefit from them.’”  These are what make God smile; they are what move His heart and bring His blessing; they are indeed inspired with the breath of heaven and build His kingdom, perhaps like almost nothing else.

‘Nothing big:’ I think I better rephrase that. The small and the insignificant to us are often of high importance to God. And that forgotten incident of so many years ago? I believe it changed my life.