A Straw from the Ground

“He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.” — Luke 16:10 (KJV)

Most of us secretly think that serving God properly means doing something big. Leading worship. Going overseas. Giving a talk that changes lives. Brother Lawrence was happy with something much smaller. Beaufort says he was pleased when he could “take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts.”

A straw from the ground. In a monastery yard, that is about the smallest job there is. But if it was done for love, Lawrence counted it as worship. He said God “regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

He went further. Some people, he said, think that getting holier means changing what they do: new activities, new disciplines, more religious busyness. Lawrence disagreed. He said our holiness “did not depend upon changing our works, but in doing that for God’s sake, which we commonly do for our own.”

Read that again slowly, because it might be the most practical sentence in the book. You don’t necessarily need to add a lot of new things to your life to grow closer to God. You need to take the things you already do, getting up, studying, eating, walking to the bus, playing sport, helping at home, and start doing them with God and for God.

Later in his life Lawrence’s job changed, and he ended up mending the community’s sandals. He told Beaufort he was very well pleased with the post he had, but just as ready to leave it as the one before, because he was “always pleasing himself in every condition, by doing little things for the love of God.”

He also warned against getting tired of small things. We ought not, he said, “to be weary of doing little things for the love of God.” It is easy to be faithful when something feels important and someone is watching. It is harder when it is the hundredth time you have stacked the dishwasher. But Jesus said that whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much. Little things are where faithfulness is learned.

So next time you pick up a stray sock, hold a door, or finish homework nobody will ever praise, you can do it the Lawrence way. Small job. Big love. God sees both.

One thing to do this week: each day, do one small, unnoticed job for someone else, and do it deliberately for God. Don’t tell anyone. At the end of the week, tell God about them.