Stars on the Ceiling

My Juniors are doing a unit on "Great Heroes of the Christian Faith". They've each adopted a famous life to research and present to the class, and they've each made a star for his or her person. These three dimensional bits of biography hang from the classroom ceiling in splendid tribute to the life lived and the deeds accomplished by giants who were not committed in a paltry, mediocre fashion, but in a grandiose self-sacrificing way. Some were martyred for the sake of Christ; some did the more difficult task and lived their entire lives without regard to this world's comfort, surrendering everything for the sake of God's call; many did both.

Inspiring? Yes. Overwhelming? That too. How could someone like Lottie Moon--raised as a wealthy, spoiled Southern Belle-- starve herself by slipping her food ration to Chinese victims of famine? How could Gladys Aylward--deemed too weak in mind and spirit to be a missionary candidate-- deliver one hundred children safely to an orphanage, by walking with them for days through the mountains in a war zone, before she collapsed into a coma? How could Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Ed McCully stand there being speared and hacked to death with machetes, yet not use the guns they were carrying to mow down their attackers? How could Adoniram Judson survive being hanged upside down by his feet every night for eight months with his head dragging on a filthy prison floor, and yet not give away the fact that the Bible translation he was working on was hiding in that very cell inside of a filthy pillow? How could Sundar Singh walk barefooted through India and over the Himalayas to Tibet to preach to people who did not want to hear what he had to say, who subjected him to abuse time after time? He could have sat comfortably on an estate in India, ignoring those who were born in the lower castes. These people were amazing. They gave and gave and gave...and the world was not worthy of all the giving. But when were we ever worthy?

I'm sure every one of these people would say quite simply that he or she was simply doing the work God had given them to do. Humble obedience shaped their star.

And, no, I'm not saying we should all follow those examples. Suffering on purpose serves no purpose and glory is not derived from the suffering itself; the glory comes from loving others so fiercely that one's own life is not the pampered, paramount motivation for all deeds. It comes from our lives being bound in Christ's life so that our eyes see like His, and our ears hear the cries that He does.

Neither am I saying that God's work is all danger and adventure, risking a life with every calling. In fact, there may be many days of tedium, persisting, plodding.

A life--the life God has given each of us, in fact--is a wonderful thing. When I consider the lives on my ceiling, I know why they shine...yes they did great work, yes they suffered, yes they slogged away tirelessly, yes they were intellectual and spiritual geniuses; but when I look at the stars and see pictures of the babies they saved, the homeless they fed, the prisons and leper colonies they reformed, the bodies they doctored, I realize that what shone was their love.

It blazed!