Humility

    During my second week as a Heartland staff member working on the media team, I was sitting in the lobby of Nunemaker lodge, starting on a few projects for the day and filing some pictures.

    I paused for a moment to look up from my laptop and noticed our Executive Director, Dan Scheneman, cleaning the windows and doors at the entrance to the lodge. I was initially taken back by the sight of, arguably, the most ‘important’ person in our office doing such a menial task. Surely it was just a smudge, I thought, he will be done soon. But to my surprise, as I continued to work, he carefully cleaned each window and each door. When he finished, I couldn’t help but sit back and reflect on what I had seen.

    It would have been so easy for Dan to ask me, or any number of other staff members to clean the windows. I’m sure his to-do list was long that day, as it is every day. (No matter what your position is at camp, your to-do list is always long.) But in that moment, Dan didn’t see anyone else’s to-do list any less important than his own. He saw a need that our camp had and he filled it. It didn’t matter that this need was simply a dirty window, or that those ten minutes could have been spent making important phone calls or doing other larger tasks.

    There are many applications here, but I am reminded of something Henry Nouwan said in his book ‘In The Name of Jesus’.

“The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”

     As Christians, we must be willing to die to ourselves; in our workplace, our spiritual lives, and our relationships. At camp, this might mean picking up the dirty sock you’ve walked past 4 times by the pool house, or doing jobs that you think no one will take notice of. The most important thing is not how many campers remember your name, or how many staff see you working hard, but instead, how well you are living out Christ’s love on a daily basis, especially when no one is looking. We are, indeed, called to be irrelevant.

    I think each of us can learn from Dan in this story and his example of Christ-like humility. Just as Jesus, an incarnate of God Himself, humbled Himself and washed His disciples feet, met with the outcasts and the lost, and reached out to us in our brokenness, we are called to ‘wash the dirty windows’ in our lives every day.