Pursuing Lofty Visions of Greatness in a Very Ordinary Life

Do you desire to do something great, something that people in your community, even around the world, will remember long after you are gone? You know, leaving some grand, indelible mark that will ensure your legacy for many years to come.

I wonder if great inventors like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright brothers had thoughts like that. Waking up one morning and thinking, “I know – I’m going to invent a light bulb (or a telephone, or a way for people to fly).” I kind of doubt that. Greatness is something that arrives without fanfare while someone’s in the midst of doing very ordinary things.

 

What about the great agricultural scientist George Washington Carver, who rose above slavery to develop techniques to counter soil depletion, discover more than 140 uses for the peanut, and become a college professor? Do you think he went to bed at night dreaming about how to achieve greatness? I think not. I suspect he recognized his calling, cultivated his passions, honed his skills, and along the way, became one of the most renowned scientists of his time.

 

One of the stark realities of everyday life is that it’s so daily, marked mostly with the mundane and rarely with anything spectacular. The legendary Helen Keller, who achieved much as an author, political activist and lecturer, despite being both deaf and blind, acknowledged this. She said, "I long to accomplish some great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." 

 

In a meditation in My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers wrote, “We have a tendency to look for wonder in our experience, and we mistake heroic actions for real heroes. It’s one thing to go through a crisis grandly, yet quite another to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, and no one paying even the remotest attention to us.”

 

Have you ever felt this way? No tickertape parade in your honor, no commendations, just the distinction of doing non-extraordinary work for little or no recognition? And yet, this is what God calls us to as His children. As Chambers also observed, “To be utterly unnoticeable requires God’s Spirit in us making us absolutely humanly His. The true test of a saint’s life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the human level of life.”

 

In one of His parables, talking about the importance of being faithful in undertaking responsibilities entrusted to us, Jesus declared, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much" (Luke 16:10). To me, the Lord is saying, “Do you long to be engaging in things great and important? First, prove yourself trustworthy in doing the small, ordinary things I’ve already given to you.”

 

Writing to believers in the ancient city of Colossae, the apostle Paul affirmed that workers or employees, whether doing small tasks or pursuing great projects, should always keep their ultimate “boss” in mind: “Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24).

 

It's not about doing great things for God; it’s about the joy and privilege of a great God doing His work through us for His glory. That way, even if we have the opportunity to do something great and noteworthy, we know where the credit should really go.

The Kind of Inventiveness We Don’t Need

Have you ever marveled at the creativity and inventiveness of the human mind? I remember as a boy learning about Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, Eli Whitney the cotton gin, and Guglielmo Marconi the telegraph.

Considered America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison introduced incandescent lightbulbs, the phonograph and many other devices that changed our lives and paved the way for other wonderful innovations. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but Mr. Edison might have been its father.

We benefit from human inventiveness in many
ways - but not always. It also has a dark side.

We could name many other notables, ranging from Henry Ford to George Washington Carver to the Wright brothers. Thanks to Elisha Otis, every time we get on elevators, they don’t plummet to the bottom level. Perhaps more than anyone else, his career had its ups and downs.

Unfortunately, inventions that serve the common good can also be utilized to accomplish all manner of nefarious deeds. Spending time around little kids, we can witness how inventive they can be for getting into mischief. Toddlers sleep a lot, and I think they dream primarily about what they can do to annoy mom and dad.

Inventiveness for the sake of wrongdoing doesn’t disappear with the passage of years. Adults also have an endless capacity for imagining ways to do bad, even with good things. Take the internet, for example. It’s essentially neutral. A means for disseminating information; enabling people to communicate quickly and efficiently with one another; and shrinking the world so we can reach out electronically and touch someone many thousands of miles and multiple time zones away.

Unfortunately, clever – and malevolent – minds have figured out many ways to do bad stuff with this essentially wonderful resource we used to call the “worldwide web”: Scams – have you gotten an email from a Nigerian prince lately? Viruses to infect the computers we now rely on so much. Computer pornography to addict the minds of viewers who believe they can indulge in mental garbage without causing harm to anyone – except for cherished relationships, work productivity, and their perceptions of the real world. Hateful expressions on social media range from simple ridicule to shameless, menacing bullying of vulnerable, sensitive people.

Technology may have changed dramatically through the centuries; the propensity for distorting our inventive capacities for harmful, destructive intentions has not.

Paul the apostle wrote about this in the opening chapter of his letter to believers in the early church in Rome, commenting on the state of those who consciously rebelled against God: “…they invent ways of doing evil” (Romans 1:30).

What was the purpose of this evil inventiveness? Paul explained earlier in the chapter, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Romans 1:21-23).

A few verses later, the apostle gets more specific: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful…” (Romans 1:29-31).

This entire chapter was a powerful indictment of society nearly 2,000 years ago, but even a casual glance at our world shows things haven’t changed much since then.

Years ago, a popular paraphrase of the Bible was called Good News for Modern Man. The early chapters of the book of Romans, however, sound more like “bad news about modern man.”

Thankfully, even when it appears humanity at its worst is on the rise, we have the assurance God hasn’t lost His capability to turn bad into good, making wrong into right. As Joseph said, after being reunited in Egypt with his jealous, vindictive brothers who had sold him into slavery years before, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

Even at the worst of times we can trust in the assurance Paul offered later in his letter to those in Rome, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

No matter how inventive humanity tries to be for conjuring up evil in new forms, God’s still in control – and can still use bad things to achieve His good purposes.