Plodding is a superpower. The kingdom of God doesn’t advance through celebrities doing spectacular things on big stages. Instead, it advances through average people just doing what needs to be done day-in and day-out.
They’ll never make a Marvel movie about people like this, but they have a superpower.
It takes a few years of living before we realize this. We start out in adulthood desperate to be extraordinary. Lore Ferguson Wilbert wrote, “I am of the ‘Don’t waste your life!’ generation, a generation of young people in the church who believed their greatest call was to not settle for mediocrity in their Christian life….Passion was the proof of salvation, zeal was the evidence of our faith, ‘Send me!’ was our mantra, and ‘world changers’ was our identity. We all wanted to be used by God, but none of us wanted to fold up the chairs afterward.”
We need more plodders. People like Melkijah.
Who?
Exactly.
When the Israelites returned from Babylonian exile, their first task was to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. The third chapter of Nehemiah is simply a list of men who each rebuilt their little part of that wall. The sections of the wall are described by the gates they adjoin. So, you have one man celebrated for rebuilding the section at the Sheep Gate, and another man honored for rebuilding the section at the Fish Gate, and so on.
As we read through the list, we get to Melkijah’s contribution. “The Dung Gate was repaired by Malkijah” (verse 14).
Would you want to be forever remembered as the Dung Gate Guy?
But if Malkijah had not stepped up to rebuild that little part of the wall, even if every other part had been completed, the whole city would have remained vulnerable.
The thing I learn from Malkijah is to ask, “Where is my bit of wall I’m responsible for? How can I do my little part so that together with everyone else the kingdom of God advances?”
Here’s to the plodders. May our tribe increase!
Tom
Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.