For August 12th:

“For the servant does not know what his master is doing….”

 John 15:15 (RSV)

When Mother Teresa died in 1997, the story of her consummate self-giving was everywhere on the news, making me aware of my own indulgent, self-centered life.  What had I ever done to ease the world’s suffering?                                             

Then I had a letter.  The name on the return address was unfamiliar; I couldn’t think of anyone I knew in Indiana.  “I’m writing to thank you,” the letter began,  “for what you did for me nearly twenty years ago.”                                               

“You and I,” it continued, “were having coffee in your kitchen after fitting the new cover on your sofa.”  I remembered now:  this was the lady who’d made the slipcovers for the living room.  She’d been miserably unhappy in her marriage, she went on, and had started to tell me about it.  I recalled now, too, being surprised at someone’s pouring out her troubles to a total stranger.                                                       

“The phone rang,” the letter continued, “but instead of picking it up to answer it, you pulled out the cord!”                                                                                         

 I didn’t remember doing that; it’s the sort of automatic thing we all do.  But apparently it had been a kind of watershed in this woman’s life.  “I mattered enough that someone would ignore the phone!  I was important.  I wasn’t trash.”      

 I sat marveling at how a routine action, which I probably wasn’t aware of even at the time, could have carried such meaning for someone else.  Apparently, God’s healing work is done not just by saints like Mother Teresa, but by very ordinary people doing very ordinary things.                                                                          

In what work of Yours, Father, will I be an unknowing partner today?

Daily Guideposts  2013, Elizabeth Sherrill