Doing Little For Christ

Dorothy Day is a hero in my eyes. She is a co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. She has a plethora of inspiring and thought provoking quotes. She's just a fantastic women in the history of the Christian faith and you should check her out. You can buy a great book containing her writings at Amazon. Here is one very small quote from her that is pregnant with beautiful truth.

“What we do is very little. But it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Christ took that little and increased it. He will do the rest. What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did he fail. He met with apparent failure on the Cross. But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest.”

When I think of the small amount of work expected of the individual person my mind also goes to Jesus' teaching (whereas Day has pointed to his example) when he shares a parable. "He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26-29).

Recently I wrote that love is the goal of the Christian (and not getting to heaven or out of hell). A brother pointed to the ministry of reconciliation we have been given by Christ as the Church. He pointed this out to say reconciliation is our goal. I don't disagree. However, Reconciliation is not entirely our duty. We are unable to reconcile others to God on our own. Alone, we can not reconcile others. However, on our own, we can love. As individuals, as a society/community/church. We can fully love and in doing so plant the seeds of the gospel/kingdom. God will grow and multiply. Salvation and reconciliation is the work of God of which we have a part and yet we are not the only part (for even creation preaches the gospel). So while we are charged with the ministry of reconciling man to God we acknowledge that our part in that process is being a people of love. We live out the gospel and in so doing plant seeds and complete our part in reconciliation.

What is difficult about this teaching is the fact that what is asked of us is not a single deed or even a repeated deed but a life. Christ does not ask that we give him a basket of fish and loaves unless the fish and loaves are the whole of our life. We do not visit the farm and plant a seed but rather we are farmers who scatter seed. It is a lifestyle. It is what we do. It is who we are. This task is not as much a task as it is an entire life lived for and in Christ. We do not merely attend church services but we die and resurrect with Jesus and live out his ministry of reconciliation by being a people of absolute love. What is expected of us is little when we observe the whole of reconciliation and yet in our eyes there is nothing larger to ask of a person.