The man caught my attention as I was cruising down Kentucky Highway 210, somewhere between Hodgenville and Campbellsville.
My five-year old grandson and I were traveling alone, and the little guy had fallen asleep in the back seat, worn out, I suppose, from a full day of fun, taking in whatever interested us along Kentucky backroads.
That’s when I topped the hill and saw the man.
He was standing on a small ladder in front of a sign. It might have read, Pleasant Run, or perhaps, Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church. But it could just as well have read: Zion Methodist Church, or Mt. Hermon Christian Church.
It was the man I noticed, anyway.
With his white, short-sleeved dress shirt, stout frame, and slightly balding head, he reminded me of Robert Duvall as “Sonny,” the preacher, in the film, The Apostle. But that didn’t mean he was the pastor. He could have been anyone who served at that church.
Standing on the ladder, with a rag in his hand and the sun beaming down on his face, he was carefully cleaning the church sign, as if he were executing an assignment of monumental importance.
In a house up on the hill, within hollering distance of the man working on the sign, folks were relaxing on their front porch—some sitting in chairs, others with their legs dangling over the side—as if his activity was a form of entertainment, like it was an expected Friday afternoon ritual, yet at the same time, a welcome diversion from the week’s weekly routine.
What did it matter, whether the sign was properly cleaned or not?
For that man, whoever he was, it mattered, for it was his church, and he must have cared about his church enough to make sure the sign for it looked its best.
It wasn’t Lakewood Church in Houston or Riverside Church in New York City. It was a country church, somewhere off the highway, probably nestled on an out-of-the-way, one-lane road in Kentucky.
I know people just like that man.
They are the ones who show up early and make sure the food is prepared for the church family suppers.
They are the same ones who stay late to clean up afterwards.
They are the ones who set up the chairs for the “dinner on the grounds,” or an “open-air” meeting.
They are the ones who wash the baptismal robes, and bring them back, neatly ironed and pressed.
They are the ones who show up on Saturdays in one-room country churches and clean the church house, “because it’s God’s house, and someone ought to do it.”
They are the ones who reach across the tracks, driving their own vehicles, loading up kids and little old ladies, and any others who are unable bring themselves to church.
They are the ones who pass out gospel tracts and Bibles at church block parties.
They are the people who don’t care about getting recognized, or acknowledged, or rewarded. They do what they are doing because they love their Lord and His Church, not because they crave the spotlight or expect deference when they show up at the church business meeting.
They are the people who arrive, like the Calvary, in answer to the call of active duty and sometimes to the welcome surprise of those of us who need to be rescued.
They are the kind of people who are willing to stand out in the hot sun on a Friday afternoon, making sure the church sign is scrubbed clean for the Sunday morning preaching. It makes no difference to them if the only ones who know what they are doing don’t seem to care that they are doing it.
The saying, “God is in the details,” is used in part to underscore the fact that God is interested in the tiny aspects of life.
But more truly, God is in the people who humbly give attention to those details, for in God’s economy, it’s often the little things done in the right spirit that make the biggest differences in the lives of others.
And that’s true whether you happen to be in Houston or New York.
Or traveling along Kentucky Highway 210, out in the country, somewhere between Hodgenville and Campbellsville.