The long, quiet, faithful life

Sometime when I read the Bible the characters seem larger than life and things seem to happen overnight. This morning I noticed that there were 93 years between Zerubbabel laying the foundation of the temple and Nehemiah finishing the walls of Jerusalem. Additionally, I noticed that among the Levites who returned were the gatekeepers whose job, since the days of the tabernacle, was to guard the gates (1Ch 9:23-27). They weren’t Zerubbabels, Ezras or Nehemiahs. They were just gatekeepers doing their job. The New Testament tells us to make it our ambition to lead a quiet life, tending to our own business and the work of our hands (1Thes 4:11). We’re not all called to set the world on fire in a week. Some of us are called to live long faithful lives where the changes are incremental.