Casual Thoughts

“The Useful and the Great” An old hymn encourages us “to do…the useful and the great, the thing that never dies, the silent toil that is not lost.” I was thinking of this yesterday after I had a brief but wonderful conversation with a man who passed me on the beach. We only talked for a few minutes, and our conversation covered relatively inconsequential topics, but nonetheless, I believe we did a “useful and great thing” together. It was a just a passing chat between strangers, yet, in a very real sense, it was an event with important significance. I guess the point of the old hymn is that anything we do can be “useful and great”, and that even our smallest activity “never dies”, but extends its significance in fathomless ways far into the future and out to the edges of the universe. No one paid attention to us as we talked beside the surf, and certainly no lives were dramatically changed by what we said, but still, the words we spoke had – and are still having – their immeasurable effects. Like a pebble dropped into an infinite sea, every particular action we perform, even the “silent toil” that no one else notices, sends ripples out into the vast reaches of the universe. That stranger’s life was changed by our conversation, and so was mine – perhaps only in small, unnoticeable ways, but changed nevertheless. We sent out a ripple “that never dies” into the sea of life, and we can only imagine what its innumerable ramifications will be as the years and decades pass.