Street Sweeping

While reading the Harris brothers’ Do Hard Things book this afternoon, I found myself in the chapter entitled “Small Hard Things.” It was my favorite chapter yet.

You see, I think all too often we Christian young people forget that serving Jesus happens in little ways, every day, here and there, one opportunity at a time. Instead, we have great visions for the future – being a world changer by being an influential politician, winning a country for Jesus by being a foreign missionary, raising up the next generation by being a wife and mother to a happy, healthy family of ten – and forget that the time to serve Jesus is NOW. Today. It’s like what one of my friends always reminds me: “wherever you are, be all there.” Don’t wait for the future to start serving Jesus, do something now!

I love what Martin Luther King, Jr. once said in an address:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music… Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

This is also a Biblical thought. Jesus said in Luke 16:10, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.” Later, while writing 1 Corinthians, Paul put it this way: “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.“ (1 Cor. 10:31)

It’s the little things in life that prove a true servant. So, let’s live our lives doing both the big and the small – all for the glory of God.