I Am But One

The little country church I attended as a child was sparse in decorative effect, but I do remember one blue-and-gold banner on the south wall, three-fourths of the way forward in the rows of hard, straight benches. It said something like this:

I am but ONE,
But I am ONE.
I cannot do EVERYTHING,
But I can do SOMETHING.
What I CAN DO,
God helping me,
I WILL DO.

It would be nice if I could tell you that the motto changed my young life, set me on the road to success, and still guides me. That would not be entirely true. The significance of those words was tucked away somewhere and has only recently come to the surface again. Isn't memory an amazing thing! Now that I am able to appreciate the wisdom of that banner, I am glad someone hung it there to remind me, all these years later, of an important truth: Whatever we do, counts.

One of my nephews, when he was quite young, told his parents, "When I grow up, I want to be a garbage collector." (What little boy doesn't want to go through the trash to see what preciousness he can find?) They did not discourage his ambition, but instead replied, "We need good garbage collectors." He turned out to be extremely well-educated with an important position in some technical career I don't even understand! But if he had been a garbage collector, that would have been important too. Tell me, just who would you miss the most—your supervisor at work if he/she was gone for a day, or the trash man if he skipped your pick-up day?

On a day-to-day basis, we need people who, as their job, throw newspapers, wash dishes, drive school buses, operate Laundromats, change tires, sell the garden produce they've grown and many more. We need street sweepers, tow truck drivers, roofing crews, mail carriers, teachers, attorneys, pastors, librarians, firemen and a host of others. In addition, we need people who will volunteer to stuff envelopes, fill trays at feeding centers, write letters for an elderly person, be a foster grandparent, or teach someone to read. We need people who will pick up trash they didn't drop, hold the door for someone, and smile whenever they get a chance.

Not all of us are going to be rich or famous or powerful; it takes a lot of ordinary people to run the world. Abraham Lincoln said, "God must love the common man, He made so many of them." But even the most ordinary of us can make a valuable contribution if we live out the idea that whatever the something is that we can do, we will do. The Wisdom Writer said, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom." (Ecclesiastes 9:10) We have to do what we can, while we can.

MaryMartha

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.