One of the heaviest thoughts that can visit the human heart is the insignificance of the average man. Seen against the long procession of the ages and the countless multitudes of people who have inhabited the earth, we are each one no more than a grain of sand on the wide seashore.
It takes some reflection to make this appear to our minds as it really is. The human ego may be counted upon to accent our individual worth and to give a false permanence to what is anything but permanent. A man in his pride may feel himself to be so important that it is hard for him to visualize the world as continuing to endure after he is removed from the scene; but all we need to do is wait. Time will grind him to dust and toss him to the winds; his friends will disappear one by one from their old familiar haunts, and there will be no one left to remember him. The passing generations will sift over him layer upon layer of forgetfulness, and he will no longer have any earthly meaning. He will cease to be a name and will become merely a statistic.
This consideration, if no other, should dispose us to embrace the message of Christ. That message is so full and comprehensive that it is never possible to state in one paragraph or one page or one volume all that it is. It is doubtful, in fact, whether all the world could contain the books if the whole wonder of the gospel were to be written. But not the least among the benefits of the cross is its dignification of the individual.
No matter how insignificant he may have been before, a man becomes significant the moment he has had an encounter with the Son of God. When the Lord lays His hand upon a man, that man ceases at once to be ordinary. He immediately becomes extraordinary, and his life takes on cosmic significance. The angels in heaven take notice of him and go forth to become his ministers (Hebrews 1:14). Though the man had before been only one of the faceless multitude, a mere cipher in the universe, an invisible dust grain blown across endless wastes - now he gets a face and a name and a place in the scheme of meaningful things. Christ knows His own sheep "by name."
A young preacher introduced himself to the pastor of a great metropolitan church with the words, "I am just the pastor of a small church upcountry." "Son," replied the wise minister, "there are no small churches." And there are no unknown Christians, no insignificant sons of God. Each one signifies, each is a "sign" drawing the attention of the Triune God day and night upon him. The faceless man has a face, the nameless man a name, when Jesus picks him out of the multitude and calls him to Himself.
No doubt we grieve our Lord by thinking of ourselves as less than we are in the plan of God. In ourselves we are nothing, and the vast gulf of forgetfulness toward which we were heading was the proper place for us. We had earned no share in God's interest, no place in His affection; our sins had forfeited any claim we might have had upon God as Creator. But the blood of the everlasting covenant has changed all that. Our claim is that of a child upon his Father. We have a right in the Father's household, and we can sit down at His table without fear or embarrassment. In the kingdom of God we signify.
Taken from, "We Travel an Appointed Way" by Dr. A. W. Tozer
