Just the other day, I was taking a friend over to the Gateway Church office in Southlake, Texas when I encountered someone that impacted me with such few words. I drove up to the office and told my friend that I would drop him off and head to Starbucks while he was in his meeting. He responded by saying there would still be some time as his meeting was about twenty minutes from now. So I figured that I would go inside and once they called him in, then I would leave for Starbucks. So I stayed around in the waiting room with him inside. The place was super quiet and awkward if you spoke anything louder than a whisper. People who worked there kept coming out and calling out the names of the people they were meeting with – just like a doctor’s office. Finally the time came for my friend’s appointment and nothing had happened. He tried several times to call the person he was meeting with, but to no avail. It was during this time that a man who worked here in the office had come to one of the doors to walk out a person he had met with. The man who he had met with was in a wheelchair. It didn’t take long to notice this man had a disorder of some sort as he spoke in big slurs and would occasionally take a long time to get out a consonant when he was talking. As the person who worked at the office said goodbye to him, the man started to wheel himself over to the outside door to leave. I noticed it would be difficult for him to get out the door as there were no buttons for handicapped people to push to automatically open the door, so I went over and got the door for him. As he wheeled over he noticed I was holding the door open for him and a big smile came over his face. Before he had made it to the door, he had said thank you to me for doing something like that. As he exited, he stopped and looked at me and said something short yet so profound. He told me that when we do little things for God, we are actually doing big things for God. He had basically told me that even though I may have thought that opening the door for him was such a small thing to me, it was a big deal to him.
I used to struggle a lot on feeling a sense of importance on my life and how small I felt compared to everyone else and what they were doing. I even get like that occasionally today and have to remind myself that it’s not about how I view myself, but how He sees me. However, it occurred to me that day that anyone who struggles with feeling small and unimportant, they should know that even such a small gesture can be so important to someone else. Somehow, by moving my muscles to swing a rectangle open I impacted a man greatly. Just a few days ago was “National Sibling Day” and among the people I was thinking about that day, he definitely was one of them, my brother in Christ. My heart goes out to him today. He definitely impacted my life with such a seemingly insignificant event.
We all have meaning to our Father. We are so important to Him that we will never be able to fully understand just what we mean to Him. Once our identities in Him are settled, we can still sometimes feel like we aren’t contributing much to His Kingdom. The truth is, if I open a door for a man in a wheelchair, I’ve opened the door for Christ. That is a big deal to our Father.
Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’” – Matthew 25:34-40