Don’t Grow Weary in Doing Good
She is a gifted artist who has traveled all over the world, painting beauty as she saw it, an easel dug into the sand on a beach someplace or perched at the top of a hill overlooking a quaint Italian village. She is a singer, a guitarist, a devoted mother and wife, a meticulous dresser with a penchant for wearing berets. She is up in years now, but you wouldn’t guess it when you watch her bebop around the church, a smile always on her face. Enthusiasm seems to come easy for her, and it is contagious – her encouragement and her effortless laugh brighten the spaces she inhabits. She isn’t loud, but she is always there, and her expression says that she is pleased to show up, delighted to be a part of it all, this life and this church and this weary world.
She recently had an art show down at the museum, complete with Eiffel Tower cookies and personal tours through some of her favorite art pieces. She told me stories of her extensive travels and made sure I didn’t miss any paintings that were tucked away in corners. I got to see what she has seen, through the lens of her artistic eye, and her passion for travel and art and beauty was electrifying. She has a way of drawing you in to her passion for life.
A few years ago, I learned a stunning fact about her. This dear woman with so much life in her has been teaching preschoolers in our church for 60 years. Let that sink in. She started wrangling preschoolers in what we call “the basement” of our church in 1962. And today, on any given Sunday, if you descend the steps to that bright and cheery spot where preschoolers wriggle and giggle and get their first taste of who God is and what He does, you will find her there, singing and crafting and loving someone else’s babies just because the Lord has given her a great gift for it.
I can’t think of a better example of one who refuses to grow weary in doing good.
When rewards are handed out in Heaven, I wonder if, alongside the great preachers and evangelists, alongside the martyrs and the missionaries, there won’t be a whole congregation of women who spent a lifetime pouring God’s love into little spirits and hearts and minds. Women who determined that, while they could do many things for the Lord, they would not neglect the care and keeping and spiritual formation of those little babies who need to know just how much Jesus Christ adores them. Women who didn’t give up. Women who determined that even when they were weary, they would not, could not stop doing good for the kingdom of the Most High God. Even in the basement. Even for 60 years.
If you are one of those women, God sees you. What you are doing matters.
Do not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time you will reap the harvest if you do not give up. Galatians 6:9