And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:10-12
“It is a great pleasure for me to remember such good and kind people and to talk about them, although I no longer possess any details about them. I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within.”
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Image, 1970) 74-75.
The way Merton recounts these “good and kind people” matches how I hope those that my son, Sammy and me, have touched on this international journey feel about us.
Read the quote again and ask God to cause your life to inspire “real reverence” in others, not through extraordinary service but through ordinary acts, done even in obscurity.
Generosity is not flashy. Coming to earth and being born among animals, wrapped in swaddling cloths, and lying in a manger is about as obscure as you can get. That action would change the world.