A few weeks ago, I was having a most ordinary morning, sitting in my front yard. I was supervising my two children as they went through their normal progression: playing with their multitude of toys, fighting over those same toys, crying over the parental confiscation of said toys, and then pretending yard tools were their new toys. They diverted from this dramatic cycle by digging pieces of scrap wood from my husband’s tidy pile in the corner of the garage to build themselves a new house because our current house, according to them, was not “builded big enough for both of us.”
During this process, I looked across the street and noticed a light on at our elderly neighbor’s house. She recently had been widowed and had spent much of the past month in and out of the hospital. In a moment of inspiration, I gathered my children. I wrote out a little card, and along with some flowers the children had picked, we headed over for a visit. Upon our arrival, my neighbor’s daughter informed us that they had been watching us for the past hour because we were “much more interesting than the news!” Mortified, my mind frantically recalled every word I had spoken to my children during the morning and every action I had shown toward them. How much more careful would I have been if I had known I had an audience!
As Christian women, we often forget to consider that we always have an audience. The audience may not be an elderly neighbor and her daughter. It could be our children, husbands, coworkers, students, shoppers at the grocery store, parents at the playground, or other drivers on the road. For those who have no husband, children, or close family or friends, and might even live in a remote cabin with no human contact, there is still an audience. Our heavenly Father is always watching over us, and we also know that there is a so great a cloud of witnesses in Heaven (Hebrews 12:1).
Very simply, I ask today: What are you showing that ever-present audience?
Matthew 5:16 commands, Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Are others seeing your good works? Are they glorifying your heavenly Father because of them?
Our impact may reach farther than we could ever fathom. We will never know until we reach Heaven just how great of an impact the testimony of our daily lives has had on those around us. How sad would it be to be so focused on ourselves, our thoughts, our struggles, and our needs that we ignore the opportunity we have to draw others to God through our daily testimony!
At the end of our visit at my neighbor’s house, her daughter slipped outside to tell me that she is the only Christian in her family. Her mother is a staunch Catholic, and the rest of the family has more or less held to that as well. The daughter said that, ever since she found out that my family attends a Baptist church, she has used that fact to witness to her mother. Every time my neighbor says anything positive about our family, her daughter adds, “Well, you know they are Christians and follow Jesus.”
I guarantee that more people than we realize know that we are also “Christians and follow Jesus.” How will we use that influence on our own ever-present audience today?
by Abigail Medford
