to finally conclude my series of thoughts, the somewhat more obvious scriptural example of a Christian who struggled with being unappreciated while being obedient to what God called him to:

Jeremiah

He's commonly referred to as the weeping prophet, and I'd be weeping, too, if I went through what he went through.

Here's this guy who God's called to speak to His people, and it wasn't always the best news.  Naturally, when a pastor or a friend tells us something that we don't like, regardless of whether they are right or not, it stings and we want to get mad at them.  Jeremiah had nearly a whole nation of people mad at him because he told them exactly what God wanted to say to them.  The people's rejection of Jeremiah affected him so dramatically that he even penned ...

"Yet I curse the day I was born! May the day of my birth not be blessed. I curse the messenger who told my father, "Good news--you have a son!" Let him be destroyed like the cities of old that the LORD overthrew without mercy. Terrify him all day long with battle shouts, for he did not kill me at birth. Oh, that I had died in my mother's womb, that her body had been my grave! Why was I ever born? My entire life has been filled with trouble, sorrow, and shame."

Take it from Jeremiah, it absolutely sucks to be obedient to God.  It pissed him off and sometimes it pisses me off (pardon my bluntness) how we feel like we're continuing to live above reproach and all we get in return is to be marginalized, overlooked, unappreciated, etc.

However, I do love Jeremiah's example for a second reason.  First, he was honest with his struggles.  Second, he still chose to remain obedient to what he was called to do in spite of how much it sucked.  Right before he throws out all that frustration, he also penned:

"Now I am mocked by everyone in the city. Whenever I speak, the words come out in a violent outburst. "Violence and destruction!" I shout. So these messages from the LORD have made me a household joke. And I can't stop! If I say I'll never mention the LORD or speak in his name, his word burns in my heart like a fire. It's like a fire in my bones! I am weary of holding it in!
I have heard the many rumors about me. They call me "The Man Who Lives in Terror." And they say, "If you say anything, we will report it." Even my old friends are watching me, waiting for a fatal slip. "He will trap himself," they say, "and then we will get our revenge on him." But the LORD stands beside me like a great warrior. Before him they will stumble. They cannot defeat me. They will be shamed and thoroughly humiliated. Their dishonor will never be forgotten. O LORD Almighty! You know those who are righteous, and you examine the deepest thoughts of hearts and minds. Let me see your vengeance against them, for I have committed my cause to you. Now I will sing out my thanks to the LORD! Praise the LORD! For though I was poor and needy, he delivered me from my oppressors."

Scripture gives us the story of Jeremiah and many other humans who chose to obey God in spite of the fact that no one on this side of heaven would fully know the impact they are having.  And I refuse to believe that those stories end with Revelation.

I guarantee you that every single person you meet has some value in them that deserves to be appreciated.  If nothing else, God created them in His image and therefore gave them some attributes of Himself.  Find them.  Find people that pack your parachute.  Find people that volunteer in invisible roles in your church.  Find a guy on the street and listen to his story (well, be careful when you do that).  If someone does something that you appreciate, thank them.  If someone does something that honors you, find out their mailing address and write them a hand-written note.  Serving might be their spiritual gift, but it doesn't mean that they need to be taken advantage of.  Take the time to get to know people, get to know their stories, remember them, and thank them. (btw, a very easy thing to do to remember people is to put their birthday into a calendar and send them a card or call them.  people appreciate having their birthday remembered).

I've probably been writing enough and I think I made my point and shared my thoughts.

signing off til who knows when again

I'll save the much more obvious scriptural example for later, but here's a character that I came across that was rather interesting ...

Andrew.

When I think of characters in scripture who were recognized for their contributions to the faith, the 12 disciples are among the more famous characters.  However, very few Christians today (myself included at times) can name all 12 w/o looking it up.  In fact, we usually can't name the ones that don't also share their name with a book of scripture (and then there's Judas).

So, naturally I was kinda surprised when I realized the impact that Andrew has had on Christendom.  However, I've been around the Church my whole life and I can't recall a single sermon on Andrew.  Here's what I journaled about Andrew a few weeks ago ...

Did Andrew ever feel slighted?  He's hardly mentioned at all in scripture.  He's one of Jesus' disciples and is mentioned whenever the disciples are listed.  But even then, whenever the disciples are further identified, he's always "Peter's brother", but Peter's never identified at "Andrew's brother".  Why not?  Why the unequal treatment?

However, John tells us a little more about Andrew.  The first thing Andrew did when he met Jesus was to go find his brother and tell him.  Andrew even brought Peter to meet Jesus.  Later, Andrew was the one who spoke up and said that a boy had 5 loaves and 2 fish.

Peter we on to become the rock of the early church.  As we read early in Acts, Peter was the central figure (other than the Holy Spirit) in the beginning of the early church.

Regarding the 5 loaves and 2 fish, it's the only miracle outside of Passion Week mentioned in all 4 gospels.

Both of those came out of the faithfulness of one of the most insignificant disciples - someone who has to be identified as being someone else's brother.

Did Andrew feel slighted and insignificant?  Maybe.  Did that stop him from being obedient and playing a very significant role in two of the most significant elements of Christian history?  No.

Nobody is a nobody.  Not even Andrew.

How many parachutes did Andrew pack?

Here's another thing that happened recently that made me think about all this stuff (I could probably share hundreds of stories, but that'd bore people to tears) ...

When I was a freshman, one of the staff in our ministry shared her vision with me that one day no one would be able to say that the reason they didn't attend something was because they didn't hear about it (k, that was more than a double negative.  ah well, I'm not an English major).  What that led to was the creation of a web site and a listserve for our ministry.  The web site was nothing to write home to mom about, but it met its goal.  The listserve on the other hand was one of the single most effective tools in communicating to the movement what was going on.

All through the remainder of my years, I was well aware that no one knew the work that went on behind the scenes to keep the web site and the listserve going and up-to-date.

Every year there are some people who send an email to the whole listserve asking to be taken off it (not the procedure to follow to be removed from the listserve).  Recently there was someone who did as such.  I was about to delete the message, but it was from someone I've known for years (we were both students together), so I decided to read it.  He actually wasn't making a mistake by emailing the whole listserve.  He was saying his goodbyes, of sorts.

For about 4 years in school, I was managing pretty much all things technical in the movement.  Some things weren't carried on, but some things were.  Fortunately the listserve management was one that was taken over.  This friend who emailed the listserve to say his goodbyes had his humor, but also tried to acknowledge those who made the listserve possible.  He tried to honor those who had packed his parachute.  The two guys who had taken control of the listserve after I graduated, he acknowledged them, however he couldn't remember my name.

I definitely wasn't acting alone.  There are many people who have packed my parachute over the years.  However, can you even imagine how hard it feels when you've put so much time and energy into serving others and then they don't remember your name?  Unfortunately, probably every person who reads this (I'll pretend for a second that people read this) knows exactly what that feels like.  It sucks.  You know (well, maybe much later) that the person doesn't intend any harm, but it just sucks when you help someone out in some significant way and they either have no idea or don't seem to care.

As I'm thinking off the cuff right now, I wonder if that's why Christians have such a reputation of being so hypocritical.  Life would be so much easier if God called people to serve in ways that they'd be recognized.  It'd sure make it much more fun to serve and to care for people.  It'd make it a whole lot more fun to send other people birthday cards if they remembered your own.  It'd make it easier to ask others how they're doing and listen to their response if they listened to you.

But that's not real life.  Real life is that people don't know who packs their parachute.  Real life is that we don't want to go pick up the books of the strange kid at school because no one before has thanked us for doing that so why would this boy.

Real life makes it so easy to be a hypocritical Christian because a biblical view of Christianity just seems like a fairy tale. (yes, that's an intentional segue into my following posts on some guys in scripture who probably felt the same struggle - k, well, one of the guys I have in mind definitely felt the struggle and wrote extensively about it)

Here's what sticks out to me about both of those stories: both illustrate an example where the impact of someone's actions is not fully felt or appreciated.  In one story, a person's actions aren't even known, and therefore not appreciated, by the person he is serving.  In the other story, the full impact of the person's actions isn't even known to himself.

Most of my thoughts are mroe in line with the parachute story, but the other does relate somewhat, too.

So, I've been thinking a lot lately on how much it sucks to serve people and then to have them either not know, not appreciate, or not reciprocate.

Christians know that the Bible says we are to "mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice."  It really takes someone who is really compassionate (feels what others feel) to truly mourn with those who mourn.  And when you're mourning, it is very comforting to have someone compassionately hold your hand through your tough time.

But what we know is really the harder thing to do is rejoice with those who rejoice.  Why is that?  Why is is so stinking hard for us to be happy for others' blessings?  I believe that a lot of it is because we feel we deserve them too.  We've been serving and serving and serving and continue to be marginalized and ignored and forgotten about and overlooked.  How the heck does someone expect you to rejoice in others' good fortune when you feel like you're not even there, or when you feel like no one would notice if you're gone?

I have a few personal antecdotes and scriptural antecdotes along those lines.

Both during my time while living in Orlando and during my time back in Chicago, the serving that I've spent the most time doing has been in offering my skills on the computer to a ministry or to a church.  In Orlando, I was working with a team of people would would put in up to 80 hours a week on developing software or doing tech support.  These are husbands, wives, dads, etc.  They have a life outside of their serving.  In fact, in order to provide for their lives outside of their serving, they are responsible to raise their own financial support and develop a team of people who are praying for them regularly.  All this to develop tools that are increasing the impact of tens of thousands of missionaries in almost every country of the world.  These people are making a huge impact in introducing all around the world to a relationship with God.

But you'd have no idea if you were to ask someone about the organization, or even if you were to read some of the feedback they get.

Just imagine how aggrevating it is to be in that environment, you've brought frozen dinners to the office for 2 weeks so that you can put in 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, and then you deploy this application you've been working on and you only get complaints.  The people you deploy to focus more on what's deficient with it than with how it helps them.  The people you serve have no idea the sacrifice that was made to develop that application.  The people you serve think 12 people worked on that one application, when in fact just on person worked on it while still supporting every other application they use to do their job. The people that see you every day ask you "Can you do this one more thing?" rather than "How are you doing?"

How did the person packing that guy's parachute feel knowing that he's saving figher pilots' lives and they have no idea who he is?

Secondly, how does it feel when the respresentatives of the organization never once mention that team when mentioning opportunities to serve?  What if you were gifted in packing parachutes, but the Air Force only recruited pilots, and as a result they had no one packing parachutes and continuously lost pilots when their parachutes wouldnt' deploy?  Imagine the impact that would have on the Air Force.  Imagine how effective a church or a missionary organization would be if they only way you could serve was to share the gospel or to give food to the homeless.  How would the organization get that food?  How would those missionaries get their resources?  How would you feel continually giving yourself serving in one of those roles while continually being overlooked because you're not in a war-torn or poverty-stricken country?

More antecdotes to come later, but lemme just say how much it sucks to be packing other people's parachutes while no one has any idea that you exist.

(disclaimer: I'm really not as bitter as these posts may sound.  I've definitely had a lot that I've had to work through over the past 5 years or so.  I wanted to focus on one aspect in these blogs, though, so that may make me sound more bitter than I am.)

Here's the second story:

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a Communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now
lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"

"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.

"I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"  Plum assured him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be
here today." Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy
uniform: a white hat, a bib in the back, and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor."  Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?" Everyone has some- one who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachute.