Have you embraced your insignificance?
Until you do, you’ll always feel second-rate, second-best—forever measuring yourself against others and forever coming up short.
Think of your chosen field, whether it be career, sports, the arts, or more vocationally driven pursuits like politics, teaching, or ministry.
Now think of how far you’ve come and consider this: someone out there—let’s call them “X”—has done it better. Yep, your success is nothing compared to X’s and probably never will be. Your impact is nothing. Your skill is nothing. You are, in fact, like a five-year old playing at doctors in the waiting room of a doctors’ clinic with actual doctors in the next room (that was a lot of doctors in one sentence but hopefully you get the point).
X is more proficient than you, more polished, more prolific.
I used to play in a band where I became frustrated by band mate’s lack of commitment. When I pressed him, he shrugged and said, “What’s the point when there’s Jimmy Page?” It stuck with me. The incomplete sentence. The absurd logic of it. He loved music, but the existence of someone better robbed him of the will to take it seriously, limiting his potential, his individuality, and ultimately—his joy.
I left behind my music aspirations years ago, but at times—especially on Sunday evenings sitting exhausted after leading two services and bracing for another work week—the old impulse to reach for significance returns.
My wife and I pastor a small church in a town in south-western Australia, alongside a fledgling church plant hanging in there by a few threads of grace and grit. I teach High School, play gigs, study, and lead a family of six. I preach about fifteen sermons a year (most of them pieced together after work, between kids’ sports and weekend errands) drawn from study, prayer, doubts, frustration, reflection, struggle, the odd moment of inspiration and clarity, and a dash of holy hope that somehow what I’m doing matters.
Sometimes I think it’s enough. It has to be. It’s all I can do.
But then I think of the likes of Martin Luther, who preached some 4,000 sermons and published 600 books in a time before electric lights were invented (did he have more daylight hours?!). Or John Wesley, who in the 18th century rode some 400,000 kilometres on horseback preaching some 7,000 sermons—up to 4 or 5 per day! Or Charles Spurgeon who preached some 3,600 sermons to about 10,000 people per week!
So I think: why bother? What’s the point? Why hang on to my own small efforts—that seem to cost me so dearly—in the face of such towering legacies?
And yet… Jesus said something that flips the whole thing on its head (as he had an irritating habit of doing!)
“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness” (Matthew 25:21).
It’s not about how much. It’s not about how far. It’s about faithfulness with what you’ve been given.
Jesus doesn’t hand out medals for productivity. He delights in faithfulness. Even in insignificance. Perhaps especially so.
With Jesus the ordinary becomes extraordinary and the extraordinary ordinary.
He doesn’t measure success by size or fame or influence. He himself only preached for some three years and travelled within a 100km (or so) radius. He went after the few, the insignificant, the small in stature. He rejoiced in the one. Still does. He wasn’t chasing followers from the other side of the world, he was serving those around him—of whom there was never a shortage!
And so maybe the goal isn’t to become a Wesley or a Spurgeon.
Maybe the goal is to plant yourself deeply in the soil where God has placed you and tend it with open hands and an open mind, seeing who God sends along.
Maybe faithfulness looks like “hanging on in quiet desperation,” as Roger Waters once put it, over “plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.”
Maybe for me, faithfulness looks like unfinished projects, less-than-great sermons, or a wish-list of ministry ideas that I will never get around to. Maybe these things that keep me awake at night are really just indicators that the only thing I have failed to do is to embrace my own insignificance.
Until you embrace your insignificance, you will live a life of futility.
You’ll strive, endlessly. Measure, constantly. Compare, bitterly.
You’ll chase the next thing—achievement, recognition, status—thinking it will finally silence that quiet voice inside whispering you’re not enough. But it never does, because there will always be X—the finish line moves every time you get close.
But when you embrace your insignificance, you are freed from the crushing burden of mattering.
The weight lifts. You are released to simply be faithful with what’s in front you without worrying so much about the outcome. With that attitude, you’ll enjoy it more and probably end up better at it anyway. Less pressure, more joy. Who knows where that might lead you?
Or maybe you'll realise it's time for a something different and you'll happily let it go because it doesn't define you—you've no longer given it the power of providing you with significance.
Perhaps “being faithful with a few things” is more about attending well to life’s simple matters: loving your children, cleaning your home, and filing your tax returns. Perhaps it’s the ordinary and the mundane that truly matters and that has the power to truly change the world.
When you embrace your own insignificance and follow Christ, you'll be given a significance that far exceeds anything the world can offer.
But, as usual, it’s just my two-bob’s worth.
