The Complete Works of Harry L. Girts

Following my stepfather’s funeral two years ago, my mom gave me a box containing an assortment of files and packets of sermon notes. The Reverend Harry L. Girts had served as pastor and traveling evangelist for over 60 years. In his painstaking style he’d carefully and prayerfully prepared and typed uncounted messages, delivering them at camp meetings, pastorates, revival meetings, interim pastoral assignments, Bible studies, and wherever else he had opportunity to preach.

As I stood looking down at The Complete Works of Harry L. Girts (give or take any missing files and folders), I could have thought, “So a lifetime of preaching, from age 20 to age 86, boils down to this - a relatively small pile of notes stored away in someone’s basement.” But it seemed, instead, something far more than that. Something that should be handled with reverence. An almost holy body of work. That box represented years of study, decades of prayer, repeated listenings for the still small voice of the Spirit, and then hours and hours behind, as he called it, “the sacred desk,” expounding what he’d heard in secret to anyone who would listen.

I was reminded of all this after reading something written by Franky Schaeffer in Addicted to Mediocrity. It applies to all of us who are carrying out Christ’s call – as pastor or Sunday School teacher or musician or discipler or daycare worker or whatever we are doing for Him. It especially applies to those who file away last week’s teaching notes with a tinge of disappointment in the lack of results. Who mail yet another seemingly insignificant card of encouragement, or explain a vital truth – again – to one who is struggling, or contribute a mere drop in the bucket toward a financial need. To such, Franky’s words are heartening:

“You cannot expect too much too soon. It is the lifelong body of work that counts. It is that body of work whose expression means something and changes cultures in which we live in terms of bearing fruit. One individual work cannot say everything.”

One individual work... like a single sheet of type-written paper in Harry’s files. It’s incomplete. It’s a part of something larger – a body of work. And so is the lesson and the song and the sermon and the little piece of ministry that we do this very day. For in the end, what we’ll present to God won’t just be our best effort, our finest moment, our most productive event, but the whole of all we did for Him.

That prospect encourages me to heed Franky’s conclusion: “Produce, produce, produce. Create, create, create. Work, work, work. That is what we must do as Christians... exercise our God-given talent, praise him through it, enjoy it, bear fruit in the age in which we live.”

And I think that in the age to come, when the veil is lifted to reveal our body of work, God will have added all the ripple effect, every speck of difference it made to someone else, and every way He used us when we had no clue it was happening... and we will stand amazed at all He accomplished through us.