You and I CAN make a difference:

The longer you are a Christian, the less you speak about “coincidence” and the more you speak about God being at work. A number of my articles fit this category – this present piece included. So let me bring some various threads together into a coherent whole.

First, something that former wild child and now new Christian Russell Brand has said certainly ties in here. He is on an amazing journey of discovery with his newfound faith, and everything seems so grand and wonderful to him. He said this recently: “The more I pray, the more coincidences happen.” Yep.

So let me piece together this latest string of events which I must regard as a God thing. On the weekend I along with a few others spoke at a pro-life meeting organised by my friend and pro-life hero Kathy Clubb on behalf of 40 Days For Life Melbourne for the 3rd World Day Against Abortion.

It was a well-attended event with an eager audience. I suppose the highlight for me was having some folks come up to me afterwards saying that they have been following me and my work for years, or that they heard me speak long ago, and they said it had a real impact for good on their lives.

Well, that sure beats the usual criticisms I get! Indeed, if you are like me, you might often wonder if you are doing much good for Christ and the Kingdom, and feel that you are not making much of an impact. So positive words like these certainly help me to keep on keeping on.

That night I was flicking channels on the television when I spotted the recent film, One Life. I decided to watch it again. I had seen it when it first hit the cinemas early this year. I even wrote it up at the time: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/01/04/lessons-from-one-life/   

As I said in that piece, this film is about

saving young children in Prague – most of them Jewish – from the Nazis in 1938-1939. It is called One Life and it stars Anthony Hopkins who plays a true character: the British stockbroker and humanitarian Nicholas Winton. He had become deeply concerned about these poor children, many orphaned, all in precarious positions, given the Nazi threat they were facing. It was just a matter of time before Hitler took all of the nation. All up Winton and a dedicated team managed to save 669 children and bring them to England, just before WWII broke out. The film looks at his life both during the late 1930s, and in the 1980s.

It was good to see it for the second time. Some things I wanted to write about in my first piece I did, but a few bits I had forgotten. I did write in the first piece about the power of a few individuals to make a difference. I did write about how God normally uses ordinary people.

But one little bit of dialogue from the film I had not included, so I do so now. A young Winton in the late 1930s is sitting with a few others discussing the situation in Czechoslovakia, and they are asking what they can do to help these children. In that brief scene we hear this discussion:

Ordinary people wouldn’t stand for this if they knew what was actually happening.
You’ve a lot of faith in ordinary people.
I do because I’m an ordinary person.
So am I.
And me.
Well, there you go.
That’s just what we need, isn’t it? An army of the ordinary.

If someone can find that particular clip of the film and share it here, that would be appreciated. But I love that last line: “An army of the ordinary.” That is what we Christians are. We of course serve an extraordinary Lord, but we ourselves are just ordinary, broken and frail individuals.

But with God’s help we can indeed make a real difference. And as I keep saying, it will not be until the next life that we fully comprehend just what it is that we did do that made such a difference. The handful of folks who came up to me on Saturday morning and shared how my ministry had a bit of an impact on them may well be just the tip of the iceberg.

As with all of us, I will have to wait till I leave this world to find out how much good might have been done in my long life as a Christian (which has been 53 years so far). So my encouragement to all of you is to keep at it. You just do not know what sort of impact you are having on others right here, right now. Persevere!

In my earlier article I mentioned how I had seen a video of a man who saved a lot of Jewish children so long ago. It was only as I was viewing the film that I realised that this movie was about the same individual: Nicholas Winton. In that article I offer links to the video of the real Winton being honoured in a BBC film studio.

It turns out that twice the popular TV series “That’s Life” featured him and his work. In early 1988 Winton was invited to appear on the show. He did not know what was happening and was hesitant when told to sit in the very first row of the audience. But the host surprised him when she said the woman sitting next to him was one of those children he had helped to rescue so long ago. The tears flowed.

And similar things happened when he was invited back on for a second time. The TV host said this to the audience: “Can I ask, Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton? If so, could you stand up please?” And with that dozens of people from all over the television studio rose to their feet.  

The host told him: “Mr. Winton would you like to turn around?” He stood up, turned, and saw them all. That too brought tears to his eyes, and there were so many hugs and conversations. Short scenes from both real-life appearances can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=524868598192459  

Winton had long wondered if he had done all that much good. And he always thought he could have done so much more. But on those two days, some 50 years after the actual events, he finally learned just how much good he HAD done.

As I say, most of us will have to wait a bit longer. Most of us will not be featured on popular secular television shows so that the whole world can learn of the great things we have done. In this life most if not all of our work will normally go unnoticed. It will usually be quite thankless work. But we must keep at it regardless.

I will not make it onto some TV show and be lauded far and wide. Neither will most of you. But that is OK, since the real reward we all should long for will come later. Simply hearing the words one day from our Lord, “Well done good and faithful servant” will be enough.

One final “coincidence”

Oh and one last thing. I tend to write a lot. This happens to be my 6650th article posted here. With so many pieces, I have to be careful not to use the same title, although that does happen. So I thought I would do a quick check first to see if the title I had chosen for this piece was used previously.

It was not. But a few pieces did have in the title something about ordinary people. I clicked on one of them from eight years ago. It had discussed a half dozen individuals from here and overseas who were real champions – those heavily involved in the culture wars and the like. Some of them were pro-life activists.

I noticed that the one person I spoke to the most in that piece was a certain Kathy Clubb! Well done champ. I thought you were doing a terrific job back then, and I still think you are doing a terrific job. I assume there will be no major television programs that will ever do a prime time feature on you, celebrating all your tireless work for the unborn.

Instead, as you know Kathy, you will mainly get hatred, and poisonous bile flung your way on a regular basis. Indeed, during my Q&A session on Saturday after my talk, one person asked about people getting offended at me for the work that I do.

I said that I get it all the time, and that I even have faced formal complaints from activist groups and “human rights” bodies. I went on to say that the most loving person on earth regularly got people angry and upset, so much so that he ended up being crucified by them.

I started naming names of Australian Christian conservatives who had been dragged off to tribunals and courts and even jail for their beliefs. I noticed Kathy to my left, and I said ‘Kathy herself has been to jail for what she believes in.’

She held up one finger, saying ‘just once’. I replied, that is still more time in jail than most of us have had to endure for standing up for what is right. And I told the audience that we can expect things to get worse before they get better, and soon enough more of us may well be facing jail time.

You can read that earlier article about Kathy and the other champs here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/08/04/ordinary-people-become-extraordinary-warriors/

So keep working for the Lord my friends. You and I may be just very ordinary people. But we can do some extraordinary things with the help of our Lord. We might just be ordinary, but our God certainly is not.

Postscript

Given that I mentioned Russell Brand above, let me share a short video that has gone viral: Tucker Carlson had asked him to pray at the end of a public meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FteoinE-qUU

[1692 words]