Faithful with Little

Faithful with Little

Amy Carmichael served in India for fifty-five years without a furlough. Her early years were undramatic: language learning, building relationships, adapting to a culture that constantly resisted her. There was no large ministry, no mass movement. She was faithful with small things — one child at a time rescued from temple prostitution, one family at a time. Eventually her work at Dohnavur Fellowship became one of the most significant missionary endeavors in Indian history. But it began with one. She wrote: 'We cannot choose what we shall do. We can only choose whether we shall be faithful in what we are given.' Her ministry to thousands began with faithfulness to one.

The parable of the shrewd manager in Luke 16 contains a principle Jesus repeats in various forms throughout the Gospels: the test of big responsibilities is performance in small ones. This is both encouragement and warning. Encouragement because it means that whatever your current assignment — however unspectacular, however limited your platform — you are being prepared for more. Warning because it means there is no neutral ground. We are always either being entrusted with more or proving ourselves unready for it. Faithfulness is not a passive quality; it is an active daily choice to do the ordinary things well, to be honest in the small transactions, to be present and engaged in the daily work no one else is watching. Heaven sees. And heaven entrusts.