As I sat in an empty Sunday school class waiting for my room across the hall to dismiss where I could go in and set up to teach, my eyes went to this corner of the room. I’d been in this room dozens, if not hundreds, of times and never paid attention to it. Sitting inconspicuously behind the door is a rather huge support column. People walk right by it without noticing. If you asked someone to draw a picture of this room they would probably forget to put that in there.

This room is a basement classroom. The 3,500 seat worship center is directly above. As I sat thinking I realized there must be dozens of these under the sanctuary standing as silent sentries doing their job of support. Unnoticed. Just doing their job.

They kind of remind me of my Daddy and his generation of men, those WWII veterans. He was constant. Always there doing his job, supporting his family, his church, his community. Strong and dependable, but unnoticed, just doing his job faithfully.

His kind are very much the opposite of what is commonly seen today. Our current generation is prone to desire the limelight, feel upset that they are unnoticed, seek their fifteen minutes of fame, and have no use for activities that don’t “build their platform.” When we stumble upon someone who is an unobserved, hard worker, we almost consider them an anomaly. We have bought into a self-focused mindset and aren’t even aware because we are just doing what the rest of society is doing.

But those sturdy pillars of strength and support are holding us all up unobserved though they may be. They support their pastor, the Church, a Compassion Child or a ministry/minister in another state even. They support their local church with their their time, energy, and abilities. They support with their presence, their prayers, and their pocketbooks. Leading us, often unnoticed, but holding us all up and holding us together in the body of Christ.

We can become a “they.” We can support a person with a phone call, text, or meeting them for coffee and encouragement. We can support with finances, food, help, or transportation to doctors. We can support by taking the time to pray with people God brings across our path, and speak Scripture into lives. We can support by praying for ministers, missionaries and Christian organizations. We can support with anonymous, consistent gifts and contributions. We can support by loving the unlovely, the complicated, the hard to love, hurting souls. The bottom line is, it takes each one of us doing our jobs even when we’re unnoticed, in a corner, in the dark.

Will we give ourselves wholeheartedly today to support individual people, the body of Christ, ministries here at home or around the world? Are we willing to do our job faithfully and go unnoticed for the glory of God? I choose today to be an unnoticed, support pillar in a dark corner holding up my tiny piece of God’s kingdom work on this earth. We may feel unnoticed, but God notices.