Ray Amos – Greatness – A Spirit in the Heart

Rev. Ray and Pat Amos

It was Sunday morning and the dishes in the fellowship hall from the Wednesday evening church supper had not been cleaned up. “Who was responsible?” As others arrived and the discussion started, they soon remembered. The week before a faithful saint of that congregation had moved away to assisted living. For years she had washed the dishes and it was taken for granted. People had gone home knowing that it always got done, but no longer thinking about who did it.

I listened to her pastor tell that story as we shared in her funeral service. I had been blessed to be the chaplain at the assisted living home where she had moved.

We often think of greatness in terms of size: the bigger some things are, the more important it makes a person (the notoriety of a speaker or singer, even the size of a congregation). The bigness of a thing is a standard of measure in society, but what seems massive to us isn’t so large in view of the works of God.

Jesus taught us that greatness is not a tangible thing, but a spirit in the heart that moves a person to care about others, and to serve in love. God looks at things differently. In the gospel one day while some were busy with their self-importance, an unnoticed poor woman slipped up to the offering box and dropped in her last two cents. She wasn’t totally unnoticed because Jesus saw her and Heaven rejoiced at the greatness of her gift.

The Kingdom’s work requires gifts big and small; seen and unseen. There was a lady who was homebound and I visited on a somewhat regular schedule. Her home was tired and her life was hard. Between my visits she would save her pennies in a jar. “Would you take this to the church for me?” I would sit it on the altar table beside the collection plates. I believe that Jesus noticed each time a coin was dropped into that jar; and He rejoiced.

The Gospel song says, “Little is much when God is in it.”
Grace and Peace, Rev Ray (1/15/2019)