Many will see the more vocal and public ministry that we do through weekend worship, community gatherings, etc.
Not as many see the quiet ministry places – the family gravesides – the quiet prayers said when holding the hand of the dying – those moments of the sign of the cross on a forehead – the quiet wrestling with God in the hidden moments.
This is ministry in the small garden plots of each soul and life. This is grace.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance
My name is Kevin. I am 66 years old and I live alone on the third floor of a brick apartment building in Seattle. The rain has been falling for weeks without stopping, just gray skies and dripping water as if the world forgot how to be sunny.
Before I retired from fixing printers, my days were filled with noise, machines humming and people chatting. Now it is just the radiator clicking and my own thoughts. After my divorce ten years ago I kept to myself. Neighbors said hello in the hall but their eyes stayed distant. We were all just passing through.
In the lobby there was this old bulletin board with yellowed flyers about lost cats, garage sales and eviction notices. It felt like a graveyard for sad things. One Tuesday, drenched from the rain, I stared at it and thought nobody puts up happy news. I pulled out an index card from my pocket, scribbled in shaky letters, “Write one good thing that happened today. No names. Just one sentence.” I taped it to the board and walked away, my heart racing. I told myself people will think I am lonely or maybe even crazy.
For three days nothing happened. My card just flapped in the draft from the front door. Then on Thursday a new note appeared. Written in blue pen with rushed handwriting it said, “My son called. He is staying sober.” I read it five times. My throat got tight. Someone else was hurting but also hoping.
The next morning there were two more. “Found twenty dollars in my coat pocket. Feels like a gift.” “My neighbor brought me soup. I did not ask.” Slowly the board began to change. People paused to read. Some added their own. A nurse wrote, “Patient held my hand. Said thank you like she meant it.” A teenager wrote, “Mom did not yell when I burned dinner.” One rainy Friday there was a single line, “I did not cry in the shower today.”
These were not grand gestures. They were small lights in the gray. But something shifted. In the elevator people did not just stare at the floor numbers. Mrs Gable from 2B nodded at me. The young couple said “rough weather” instead of nothing. I even brought her a spare umbrella when I saw her struggling with her groceries.
Then Mr Henderson, the building manager, tore my card down. He said kindly, “Rules, Kevin. No postings without permission.” The board went back to lost cats and eviction notices. The light faded. People stopped pausing. The hallway felt colder.
But then something happened. I came back from putting my recycling out and saw a sticky note taped to my door. “Your umbrella saved me. -5C” Below it another, “My chemo was not so bad today.” Soon notes were everywhere. On mailbox doors, taped to elevator buttons, slipped under car wipers. Someone even wrote on the back of an eviction notice, “Got a job interview tomorrow. Fingers crossed.”
Mr Henderson found me again. “Kevin, this is against the rules,” he said. But his eyes were reading a note stuck to his clipboard. “Thanks for fixing my sink, Mr H. It meant a lot.” His eyes got shiny and he cleared his throat. “Landlord says as long as it is not damaging, maybe just this board. But only this board. And no names.”
Now the board is alive. Rain or shine people add their line. “My plants survived.” “I made it through the grocery line without panic.” “I saw a robin. Spring is coming.”
I do not feel alone in the hallways anymore. We do not hug or throw parties. But when it is pouring and Mrs Gable’s cane slips, three hands reach out at once. When the young couple argues, someone leaves cookies at their door. We are not fixing the whole world. Just this building. Just today.
Last week a new note appeared in shaky handwriting like mine. “I was going to end it today. Then I read this board. Thank you.” We never found out who wrote it. But the next day two more appeared. “You matter.” “We are here.”
Sometimes all it takes are simple words on paper. Sometimes the bravest thing is admitting you are not fine and trusting someone else who is also not fine. You do not need a stage or a big project. Just a little space to say, “This was good today.”
And maybe that is how we rebuild the world. One honest sentence at a time.
For a small amount of perspective during these crazy times, imagine you were an American born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
When you’re 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.
When you’re 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.
At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.
As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, work together, help each other out, and we will get through all of this.
If you allow yourself to be the person that you are, then everything will come into rhythm. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessing in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love, rather we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.
JOHN O’DONOHUE
Excerpt from the book, Anam Cara, 25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/anam-cara
County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill
Wherever you are today and whatever God has you busy doing, I pray that you feel lifted up by the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Last night on my way home, I took this photo in my rear view mirror. We are reminded through Scripture to look for God’s promises out there as we live our lives. Sometimes that is in looking back and sometimes it is in looking way out in front of us. Here is the truth, whether we see it or not, it does not diminish God’s promise because God’s promises are good and true. God will do what God has said and shown. Be on the look out for those promises in your days.
This Scripture from Romans 12:1-2, in the Message Version, brings our daily lives into focus. The section is entitled: Place Your Life Before God
2 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you and develops well-formed maturity in you.
Remember always, God is helping you.
A little humor for your day as well through this story of Thankfulness:
There was a woman at work when she received a phone call that her daughter was very sick with a fever. She left work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication for her daughter. She returned to her car to find that she had locked the keys inside the car.
She didn’t know what to do and started to panic, so she called home and told the baby sitter what had happened and that she did not know what to do. The baby sitter told her to find a coat hanger and see if that would open the door. The woman looked around and found an old coat hanger that had been thrown down on the ground, possibly by someone else who also had locked their keys in their car. Then she looked at the hanger and said, “I don’t know how to use this.” So she began to pray and asked God to send her some help.
Just then a motorcycle rumbled into the parking space next to her car. A rough looking biker got off and saw her situation. He asked if he could help her. The woman thought, “This is what you sent to help me, God?” With no other options she told him yes, as she needed to hurry and get home to her sick daughter. He walked over to the car, and in a few seconds her car was opened.
She hugged the man and said, “Thank you so much! You are such a nice man.” The man replied; “No, I’m not, Lady. I just got out of prison for car theft.” The woman hugged the man again and with sobbing tears cried out to God, “You even sent me a professional.”
I needed that laugh today. Maybe you did too.
Be well in grace. You are loved.
I love being a dad and am beyond grateful to be blessed with our 5 children. One of the joys comes to me by sharing faith in Jesus together. Another joy is cheering them on as they run their cross country and track races.
One of my favorite all time Scripture verses from Hebrews: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith”
To “run the race of faith,” Christians must focus on Jesus Christ, the “author and perfecter” of their faith, and persevere through life’s challenges with discipline, commitment, and endurance. This biblical metaphor from Hebrews 12:1-2 encourages Jesus followers to shed distractions, throw off sin, and look to Jesus’ example of enduring suffering for the joy that awaited Him, knowing He is their ultimate prize and hope.
Key Aspects of Running the Race of Faith
Our joy is in running the race together! Thank you Jesus.
Johnson 2025 Sabbatical 