Praising Plodders

The true earth-shakers

In Praise of Plodders

Head bowed, grit-inspired,
Hills will be vanquished; 
Their rounded summits gained, 
Perhaps laughable,
To those who, 
On craggy tops admired, 
Receive stardom and applause
Yet each journey requires  
The same patient perseverance;
Perhaps greater courage, 
Not dancing, shooting, red-hot flames,
But slow, smouldering coals.

Most paths are winding long,
The destination dull routine,
Our minor part in every scene, 
Not worthy of the hero’s song.

No sprints here;
only firm steps, 
Grounded in;
A will, willing,
To face the world’s wrath,
and a faith, believing in, 
The call and chosen path.

No glory in the snail’s ponderous progress, 
its destination long veiled in cloying mist, 
Our way forward is slinking small, 
mundane, oft traversed in fear’s shadow.

This full joy fuels our life’s campaign: 
To serve, to share, and in our plodding, gain,
Pilgrims, who through us will see,
Firm constancy, our final victory,

Then on our arduous journey to embark,
and with doggedness advance,
and thus joyfully, perchance,
enjoy the Sun that conquers the dark.

Others have encouraged me to document stories taken from our decades of trying to be faithful to Jesus. The stories can seem captivating. The stories attract attention. The problem with them is they portray the missionary life as dramatic, thrilling, difficult and, therefore, the missionary as unique or especially gifted. As a result, I feel the need to set my record straight. I am neither. I am a plodder, proudly so.

The temptation is to focus on those peak experiences, the ones that pierce the clouds of the routine. I have a few to tell, but to be honest, most of them are situations I have stumbled into, unintentionally. In those, God has protected me from my own foolish decisions. They may garner attention, but have seldom been teaching moments in my life and they don’t define the way God has used me or any of the people whose faithful service I admire.

The poem describes what is for me, the norm. For the race is seldom to the swift, but to the one who overcomes all our self-serving impulses and manages to establish a testimony of faithfulness. There is a level of stubbornness required to follow through on one’s promise to put God first and to do his will before one’s own. People look at mine and my wife’s lives, and may consider us to be successful missionaries because we lived in a place, and while living there God established a church, a school, and a camp ministry. But we know the truth. We know none of it was built through our charismatic personalities or spectacular skill sets. We are both plodders who can be obstinate when we get a clear vision of how God wants to use us and what he wants us to do.

What was accomplished in Ecuador, or in our years of prison ministry were products of God’s patient mercy and of the countless hours doing common things, like visiting people in their homes and trying to understand life as they experienced it. During our years in prison ministry it was the mundane letter-writing, the routine of driving to a prison and going through security protocols each time to carry in a few hours of normalcy and hope for the men and women we served.

Plodding work may not be spectacular, but it is the foundation of enduring ministry.

Some hints for becoming plodding people God can use:

• Don’t forget whom you serve. You serve God and are persistent, sensitive, kind, compassionate, reliable, and persevering so his name will be glorified in and through you.

• Don’t focus on results. Be a branch.¹ Be faithful to the task before you regardless of the outcomes. Never forget you aren’t responsible for the fruit, it is God who gives the increase.²

• Focus on what is really important- relationships. People let you down- don’t make your love dependent on them living up to your expectations. It is those relationships, sometimes with some who you thought would never respond, that can bring the most joy.

• Expect obstacles. Be flexible. God will always have better ideas than you.

• Believe in prayer- When we do, we will trust that God is doing things behind the scenes that we may not be able to see.

• Remember God’s promises and hang on tight to them, especially when it seems you hit a brick wall. .

“Purpose to be a plodder. A plodder keeps moving. A plodder perseveres. A plodder presses on. A plodder knows the disappointment of unrealized ideals, feels the fear of failure and exposed deficiencies, and the ambiguity of too many demands, options, and tasks. But a plodder isn’t immobilized by them.”³

1. John 15:4-8

I Corinthians 3:6-8

2. ⁶ I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. ⁷ So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸ The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.

3. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/nine-practical-pointers-for-plodders