Guest Post: Mighty Works for Christ

In response to the recent series on hospitality, writing friend Hilda Barnhart sent me this piece which she wrote 25 years ago, about one week of her life. It provides a fitting epilogue to my own words. What does it take to do mighty works for Christ?

Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash

Matthew 10

And as ye go. . . .v. 7

  Sometimes amidst our busy lives we lose sight of Christ’s command to take the opportunities as we go.

ON CARPENTER ST.

I dream of Someday, of “mission high fulfilling”

  “Heralds of Christ, who bear the King’s commands,

   Immortal tidings in” our “mortal hands.”

      “The message glorious”

       The “prayer victorious”

          The “shades of night”

          Dispelled by light

              “Power. . .unfurled”

               Throughout the world.

        Through “mountain pass”

        “And deep morass”

             “The highway of the King”

              Of these we sing.

I dream of it

  Great things

     Mighty works

         For Christ.

But for now I am stuck

  With the trivial

     Humdrum

         And mundane.

This is how it goes. . . .

   My husband wondered if, come next-day noon

      I might feed the seed-corn man

         (He was coming to weigh a plot).

   So that First Day night I said, “Yes, I will

      if you go fetch me a pack of hamburger from the freezer.”

    He ate with us, this young unmarried man of thirty

        and asked us as he partook of Mennonite country cooking

           what the Bible said about divorce and remarriage.

   He really didn’t know what God said

      but he didn’t want to sin—though he admitted

          he was still sowing a few wild oats.

   So we read the Word and explained

      and it took half a day to straighten the house

          and fix the food

               and visit congenially

   All for a seed-corn man.

       And me. . . . needing to do pears

                          and bookwork

                          and housecleaning in particular

        so that I can have really important company

           instead of these mundane people who so often enter my life.

And then on Wednesday

   the deacon’s wife wondered if I would have any literature

     to send to a hungry friend

        who had come back to the Lord

           after twenty years.

She knew church papers

   and other useful things

     have a way of collecting in my house;

        thus called on me.

So I compiled a pile

  and took it up to the deacon’s wife

    and we talked only a wee bit

       (surely not more than 45 minutes)

But somehow that gesture and the issuing fellowship

   blew my morning.

     (And she had wallpaper to hang, too.)

Then Thursday I received a call

  from the Tompkins company

     promoting their windows.

This is Alice McGill—she said. . .

   from the Tompkins company.

Alice McGill!  I thought. . .so I listened politely–

  it really was Alice.

    I could tell from her voice

       though she had only been to church a few times

          was it three? four? years ago?

And when she finished, I said,

  “I don’t need any windows

      but I’m wondering how you are, Alice.”

         And she was surprised I remembered her name.

I also remembered her old gray van

   and her poverty

     (Her husband—once divorced—is ill and Alice is the breadwinner.)

She took note of my number to call me back

   but who know whether

     I’ll hear from her again.

   It seems so hopeless.

And Saturday. . .

   Some of us went to town and when we got home

     there was an orange flag—with writing–

        close to our driveway.

   What are we supposed to be selling?

     I wondered.

   My daughter wondered the same.

      But it was only a notice of a yard sale

        on Carpenter St.

   So we went on up the road

      and followed more orange flags

         to Carpenter St.

   There were two yard sales.

      Nothing interested us at one

        so we moved across the street

           to a rather forsaken looking place.

   The lady came out

      and mentioned how she couldn’t sleep nights.

         Her grown up son had come home.

            (The grown-up ones are worse than the younger ones, she said.)

   Who knows what he was in to.

     She said, “Pray for me” and we left.

        (We had bought one ordinary item.)

    What a dry run.

Someday perhaps, we might get into

   street meetings

   or other organized outreach

   or have time to regularly invite people over who are obviously searching

   or maybe even do counseling for the sinsick and downtrodden.

      There is no end to the far-off possibilities.

But for now, I am stuck

  with the trivial and mundane

    like praying for humdrum people on Carpenter St.

  But even a drink of water given to one of these little ones  (or those we count of little importance) is noticed by God.

  And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. v. 42