I’m snowed in today (and have been since Thursday), and though we may get some relief this afternoon what with the sunny weather, it’s still quite cold and icy. Although it’s Sunday, the traditional day for church, most churches in our area are closed. We don’t expect snow like this and to last as long as this, so in many communities snowplows are either not available or they plow only the mains streets—and not us three miles from the center of town in a rural neighborhood. So we wait for the rains to come again, as they always do, and we occupy ourselves with activities that can be done usefully while snowbound.
On a Sunday for church, then, I am listening to recently discovered music. Today it is “Little Things with Great Love,” from the album “The Porter’s Gate Worship Project: Work Songs.”
I am enjoying the music itself, for its acoustic simplicity. I enjoy music that is driven by voices as well. And I am looking for words that drive into meaning.
This song is perhaps aspirational, but it is a reminder, to me, of one great value of my faith: that it has meaning about life, and has a living purpose for each of us—to do little things with great love.
The last line is perhaps the best for me:
Oh give us ears to hear them and give us eyes that see —
for there is One who loves them: I am His hands and feet.
I am reminded by this of something said to me last week along the same lines. We are here not only for ourselves, but for others, who may need but love and affection, attention and space, work and jobs and food and housing and warm clothes and support for their children and pets. Oh yes, also a sense of dignity and worth, and the touch of a human. The ordinary things that some of us take for granted with all the resources we have as settled middle-class people.
But all around us are the children of God and they are without.
So we do what we can, when we can, as much as we can.
I’m not going to tell you what to do, or even what I do. I do what I can when I see an opportunity. As I told a pastor friend of mine, “I check all the knobs to see which doors are unlocked, and then I open those doors. There’s always an opportunity once I cross that threshold.” As long as I have resources and compassion and understanding, I’ll move.
For a lot of my friends in the faith and outside the faith, there is a sense that religion is dead and constricting, useless, if not just crippling, to us humans.
It can be different than that. It can be life and hope and joy.
Be the hands and feet.
If you’re interested, you can buy the album on Bandcamp, which I recommend, because we cannot be a joyful people with many resources in our joy if we do not honor and pay our artists.
The words to this song are as below:
VERSE 1:
In the garden of our Savior, no flower grows unseen;
His kindness rains like water on every humble seed.
No simple act of mercy escapes His watchful eye —
for there is One who loves me: His hand is over mine.VERSE 2:
In the kingdom of the heavens, no suff’ring is unknown;
each tear that falls is holy, each breaking heart a throne.
There is a song of beauty on ev’ry weeping eye —
for there is One who loves me: His heart, it breaks with mine.BRIDGE:
Oh, the deeds forgotten; oh, the works unseen,
every drink of water flowing graciously,
every tender mercy, You’re making glorious.
This You have asked us: do little things with great love,
little things with great love.VERSE 3:
At the table of our Savior, no mouth will go unfed;
His children in the shadows stream in and raise their heads.
Oh give us ears to hear them and give us eyes that see —
for there is One who loves them: I am His hands and feet.