by Jason Byassee, January 20, 2014
Jason Byassee
I’ve been feeling kind of weepy lately. And I blame you. I keep seeing instances of faithfulness among God’s people. And since from my vantage I get to see things the rest of you don’t get to, let me give you a glimpse. Bring a tissue.
I noticed it first when I was checking out of one of our local grocery stores. My checker outer is one of our college students. We were chatting when she sprang this on me, “We’re tithing now!” I almost couldn’t speak. Here’s a student working her way through college at whatever wage our grocery stores pay. And she’s taking 10% of that hard-earned hourly wage and committing it to God through our church. What a charge for those of us who spend that money in kingdom work, to take care of every penny. What an example for the rest of us to do likewise.
That same day I was in conversation with one of our recent college graduates. I had noticed a certain lack of initiative in moving away from Boone, and told him I assumed a ladyfriend in his life was to blame. He dissented. “I refuse to leave my guys,” he said. He’s a volunteer in our youth group, and has led his guys through from 7th grade until now, 11th. And he’s not leaving until they graduate. Because these boys have seen too many men leave: dads and step-dads and others. He doesn’t want to add to the list of beloved elders who find something else more important than them and so move on. Again tears came and almost overflowed.
I might have first noticed this problem a few weeks back. A family in our church has been sitting vigil by the bedside of their matriarch. They have been shuttling back and forth from Boone to a city with a larger hospital for the sake of her care. I arrived at church around 8 a.m. one Sunday and there they were, setting up chairs and partitions and tables for Crossroads. Three hours early. Didn’t they need to be in a hospital room two hours away? “This is what we do,” one said. “We set up for worship.” They wouldn’t even be there that day–they had to get back on the road. Offering service for others, most of whom would never see it or know it. Tears again.
I’ve noticed the weepiness again in conversation with committee leaders. This work is often unsexy, undramatic, uninteresting, and absolutely crucial. One committee chair just rotated off after redoing his group’s bylaws. This is a book-length document that hadn’t been attended to since the first Clinton administration. He’d gone through, line by line, updating everything. Who would ever know, outside a few committee members and I? He wasn’t working for thanks or recognition, but for a ministry he believed in. Likewise another committee chair of a group that oversees significant funds. He inherited a grab bag of different accounting systems that others had found impenetrable. He simplified it enough that we can make it work now. He’s no longer a part of that group. But every time I look at that budget I give thanks for his doing of that old fashioned word: “duty.” Tears of thanks.
Why tears? I think because I find it moving beyond words to see God’s people stepping into their baptismal identity as those beloved and healed by Christ and working for his kingdom. In these examples they do so quietly, without fanfare, for the benefit of other people, most of whom they will never know. It’s enough to think Jesus still has work for us to do. That God is not finished with us yet. That the Holy Spirit can mold people even as self-centered as us sinners into outwardly attentive saints. There is nothing more beautiful than God’s glory working itself out among God’s people.
Cue the tissues.