“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.”1
Is the above statement true for you? It certainly is for me. All my life I have wanted to do something that really was important for people…that mattered to them, made their lives better in some way, enriched their lives…and not just a couple of people either. I wanted to “save the world.”
As I became a bit older, I decided that I would “save the United States” in some way…and then the state of Indiana. For some reason I was not able to accomplish these things.
Then I became a group home manager for six men with retardation and some physical problems as well. For these six men, I could make a difference. I could see that they attended church. I could teach them how to behave in public so that they were not ridiculed. I could bring our family Christmas Eve tradition to the group home. Did anyone understand? I don’t know, but one of the men asked if we were going to do it the next Christmas. I said that we were; he said, “Good.”
Then came a time when I was unable to work at the group home any more. What then does a person do? After realizing how much I allowed my work to define me, I had to turn another direction. It took a long time. And I was unable to go to church; I also did not think to read the Bible much. I read, listened to music, and learned to paint…not well, but I learned.
These tasks I had to do as if they were “great and noble,” or my life would not have made any sense to me at all. I am not quite certain that I ever attained “great and noble,” but I was trying at least.
Years went by. Health problems became worse, better, and worse again…just as they do with everyone. But I had a church visitor…not from my church. I was visited by a man who was and still is a Jehovah’s Witness. He would come with his little girls. That man knew that I was a Methodist and would always be a Methodist…but he came four or five times a year.
When I moved, he found me and continued to visit. I watched his kids grow up, and I met his grandson. This man taught me about discipleship. He had a noble task and did it no matter how many doors were slammed in his face. He was doing God’s work, and there was no doubt about it. His was a “noble task” indeed.
Eventually, I got a computer…and decided to do our church website with no knowledge at all of what I was doing. I began reading the Bible, went back to church when they installed an elevator, and I am now here writing about doing small tasks nobly. We must. We are God’s children. We can serve Him well by doing our “small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
Carol
1 Helen Keller
