In Hidden Places, With Names Unknown

Let's tinker with the notion that only powerful people in powerful places move the engines of the world.  Sometimes it is that a cataclysmic avalanche starts with the smallest fall-from-branch snow-tuft.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a wonderful poem called St. Alphonsus Rodriguez.  It is about a Jesuit priest (1532-1617) who did nothing spectacular in the world's eyes throughout his long career.  He was merely a humble door porter at a college in Majorca for 46 years.  (Majorca is an island belonging to Spain). He was known for having profound impact on those around him. He was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1887.

But in the Kingdom of God--surprise, surprise--it is often in the overlooked corners with the understated folks where God is doing something profound and vital and world-altering.  With praying door porters. And store clerks, and electricians, and accountants, and middle-school students, and wandering poets. Oh, He uses kings and presidents and CEO's as well.

The point is that He is the point. He can make rocks cry out, donkeys speak, storms sit still, and heavens declare glory.  And if He can do that, He can use Alfonso.  He can make your life and my life sing.  The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me (Psalm 138:8)!

And now the poem:

Honor is flashed off exploit, so we say;

And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield

Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,

And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.

On Christ they do and on the martyr may;

But be the war within, the brand we wield

Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,

Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,

Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,

Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)

Could crowd career with conquest while there went

Those years and years by of world without event

That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.