Illustration: Service

J. Michael Shannon

Antioch College recently began a campaign to reopen the school. News reports reminded people of its origins and founder, Horace Mann. Mann gave a compelling commencement speech in 1859 that contained a line that became the college’s motto. Mann said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Mann died a few weeks after delivering the speech. The motto so impressed Antioch alumnus Rod Serling that he included it as a major factor in one of his “Twilight Zone” teleplays. In the show, a competent but rather obscure professor ponders retirement while depressed about the thought that he had done nothing of significance, quoting Mann in the process. As the episode progresses, the professor is part of a vision in which his students from the past visit him and encourage him that his teaching along with his acts of kindness and service were not forgotten, but in fact multiplied as each of his students did their deeds and made a difference in their corners of the world. The professor then faced his retirement with the joy of knowing he had won a victory for humanity.

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Illustration: Service

Fred Craddock was the visiting preacher at a church one Sunday afternoon when a van full of ragged teenagers pulled in. They looked in bad shape as they sat on their bedrolls, waiting for their parents to pick them up.

Craddock asked them what was going on. He learned they were returning from a week of mission work. They had joined other youth and built a little church.

“You tired?” he asked one boy.

“Whew, am I tired!” he said. “But this is the best tired I’ve ever felt.” That is the reward of service–“the best tired I’ve ever felt.”
(Craddock Stories, Chalice Press)

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Illustration: Service

J. Michael Shannon

An Orlando, Fla., newspaper carried the story of a woman named Irene Johnston who was particularly dedicated to the “Meals on Wheels” program. The unusual thing is that Irene is 100 years old, an age when she might be expected to receive meals on wheels. Sometimes she delivers meals to people 40 years younger than herself. Of course, some of the volunteers are younger, but Mrs. Johnston shows us service can and should be a lifestyle for our entire lives.

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Illustration: Service

In his sermon “Blowing Your Horn,” Richard Love shares this: “Sir Michael Costa, the celebrated conductor, was holding a rehearsal. As the mighty chorus rang out, accompanied by scores of instruments, the piccolo player — a little pint-sized flute — thinking perhaps that his contribution would not be missed amid so much music, stopped playing.

“Suddenly, the great leader stopped and cried out, ‘Where is the piccolo?’

“The sound of that one small instrument was necessary to the harmony, and the master conductor missed it when it dropped out. The point? To the conductor there are no insignificant instruments in an orchestra. Sometimes the smallest and seemingly least important one can make the greatest contribution and even if it doesn’t seem to make that big a difference to the audience at large, the conductor knows it right away!

“In the church the players and the instruments are diverse — different sizes, different shapes, different notes, different roles to play. Like the piccolo player in Sir Michael’s orchestra, we often in our own sovereignty decide that our contribution is not significant. Our contribution couldn’t possibly make a difference, so we quit playing, stop doing that which we’ve been given to do. We drop out, but the Conductor immediately notices. From our perspective, our contribution may be small; but from His, it is crucial.

“I just have to believe I’m talking to some piccolo players who have dropped out of the orchestra for whatever reasons: pain, exhaustion, insecurity, criticism, laziness, misbehavior. Convinced that your contribution doesn’t mean a hill of beans in the bigger scheme of things, you have buried your talent in the ground.

“For all piccolo players who won’t play, or at least aren’t playing, Jesus has something to say.”

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