Be who you are called to be…

“What’s troubling you?”, the younger man asked the older.

“I wonder that my life hasn’t been well spent.”

He was born impoverished in inner city Sydney.  He tasted alcohol in his teenage years and jail by the time he was fifteen.  He was a ‘cockatoo’ for two-up schools, keeping an eye out for the coppers.  Later, a scout for his sister’s brothels.  At thirty-two he tasted World War One.

In 1930 he found himself at St Barnabas Church on Broadway.  He met Jesus.  Another two years rolled by, and he knew what he needed to do.

“Why might you say that?” said the younger man.

“I have seen nothing good from all my work.”

The younger man knew better.  He had seen the hands raised when asked if this man had changed their life.  Many hands.  Hundreds.

The message in that church in 1932 was titled ‘The Echoes of Eternity’.  All these years later the older man reflected, “Eternity went ringing through my brain and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write “Eternity””.

He found some chalk, and the word Eternity came out smoothly in a beautiful Copperplate text.  Arthur was illiterate.  He couldn’t read it.  Yet he wrote.  Over half a million times over a period of 35 years on the gritty streets of Sydney.  He wrote.

Many lives were changed.  They still are being changed.

Has the Lord asked you to do something?  Perhaps you feel saddened because you see nothing good from all your work?  Keep writing.  Keep doing.  Keep being who you have been called to be.