Celebrating People in the Background

Among the junior high girls in my Bible study, there's a general consensus about who gets noticed at their school. One of them summed it up eloquently: If you choose to have good character and do the right thing, you're making a decision to be in the background. My four kids would all agree with this statement. The irony is that they go to a character-based charter school.

But when I read these words from one of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, I saw that these kids' experience aligns with the truth of our bigger world. 

There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. Infamous criminals act out the aggressions of timid conformists. Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators. People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash. Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness get headlines. 

No culture has been as eager to reward either nonsense or wickedness. 

If, on the other hand, we look around for what it means to be a mature, whole, blessed person, we don't find much. These people are around, maybe as many of them as ever, but they aren't easy to pick out. No journalist interviews them. No talk show features them. They are not admired. They are not looked up to. They do not set trends. There is no cash value in them. No Oscars are given for integrity. At year's end no one compiles a list of the ten best-lived lives. 
(from Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best)

We can occasionally find a human-interest story celebrating good works, but usually it's on such a large scale that I find it hard to identify with. I can't give a million dollars to a worthwhile cause. I've yet to find myself in a situation in which I can save a dozen lives, or even one.

But then I get off the internet and turn off the news and think about the real people who I know. Like my 74-year-old friend who spends his days tending to his ailing wife and doing everything he can to keep her out of a nursing home. He himself has spent decades in chronic pain because of rheumatoid arthritis, and a spinal stroke several years ago took a severe toll on him. And yet when I see him, he tells me over and over again, "I love God," like a teenage talking about his first love. He loves God in a way I can only hope to experience some day. He gets my Oscar for a life well lived.

So does my mom, who selflessly gave years of her life to provide a home for women transitioning out of jail. She lived with them day and night, testing their urine and trying to help them start new, clean lives, knowing only a fraction of them would succeed. She wasn't a social worker or a mental health expert. She was a secretary and a grandma who did what God told her to do, regardless of the personal cost.

There's my sister-in-law who took care of an elderly lady in her church for years, while simultaneously raising three of the greatest kids I know. My friends who raise special-needs children with hope and joy. The moms and dads I know who do foster care and do it well, loving on crack-addicted babies for months until they have to release them back to the state. These are the people who deserve accolades and awards--and yet all of them would run away from it. These are "background" people. They do what they do quietly, off the radar, not for attention but simply because it's the right thing to do.

I hope my Bible study girls and my own children will grow up to become those people. They won't be social media stars or make the talk-show circuit, but they'll be people who are mature, blessed, and whole. People pursuing the adventure of goodness and righteousness. What could be more challenging--or more exciting--than that?