Looking backward, every Bible story seems a big deal to us today. After all, the stories of Scripture have become the subjects of sermons, theatrical productions and songs. They’re depicted in stained glass windows in our sanctuaries, painted on chapel walls by Renaissance masters and all of them are bound in leather, cherished by their owners. But I can’t help but wonder how many of the stories we think of as being epic today might have seemed barely notable to the folks who actually lived them. Now, I’m not talking about all the big, miraculous, Cecil B. DeMille moments like the parting of the Red Sea, the fall of Jericho or David’s slaying of the giant. The biblical record certainly contains breathtaking moments that would have been etched in the minds of anyone who witnessed them. But the majority of the stories must have only become significant to us through the retrospection of many years.
When Nehemiah, for instance, left his horse and bodyguards behind to walk the broken walls of Jerusalem in the middle of the night, it must have seemed to Nehemiah and his men like nothing more than a foreman getting a bead on a project before daybreak. Of course, today we see it as a moment of sacred fellowship between Lord and leader ahead of a monumental and important struggle. Or take Paul climbing the Areopagus in Athens to share the gospel with the learned men of the day. For us, that moment on Mars Hill is one of the most beloved and celebrated in all of Christian apologetics. Perhaps no scene in the book of Acts has been more often preached, painted and portrayed. But to Paul and those in attendance that day, I imagine it was very much just another day at the office. Profundities were common on that mount and Paul filled every spare moment in compelling dialogue. Or how about baby Moses being tucked into that basket by his mom and floated among the reeds on the banks of the Nile? There were tens of thousands of Hebrew women giving birth in Egypt at that time and because of Pharaoh’s deadly decree, every newborn boy was in grave danger. Thousands and thousands of little baby Israelite boys were cast into the Nile and drowned. Moses’s mom hid him as long as she could before surrendering him to the Nile as well; only she, by use of a basket lined with bitumen and pitch, ensured that God would be given every chance to spare the baby’s life. Everyone today knows this story and shares it as testimony of God’s amazing grace. And well they should. But at the time, I’m sure it just seemed the desperate act of a desperate mother living in desperate times.
I draw your attention to all this as an encouragement. A lot of days, I imagine our ministries must seem pretty routine. We faithfully open our church buildings on Wednesday nights to host sparsely attended prayer meetings. We cook up breakfast casseroles to take to the monthly women’s breakfast, only to take them back home again barely touched. We have neighbors over for dinner and pray awkward prayers before the meal. We climb into pulpits and preach pretty unremarkable sermons to pretty unremarkable people. And while we may get discouraged thinking that none of these moments, and many others besides, will ever be recorded in the annals of church history; do know that every act of faithful service to God is being used by him to transform lives and alter eternities.
Indeed – looking back, every life surrendered to God is a leatherbound life.
