John Milton wrote this: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
It’s from his sonnet, “On His Blindness.” Milton was a writer, a renowned and celebrated writer. He became an important figure and so everything he did and wrote became influential. He was a guy in the know, on the inner circle of public life. Still young, he was achieving the height of his powers and influence. And by the age of 43 he was completely blind.
Imagine it: Maybe you like to build things? Your hands are gone. Run? You’re paralyzed. Sit and talk with friends? You’ve gone mute. Listen to music? Deaf.
And what if your passion is reading and writing? Blind.
And now what is to become of your life? How will you leave a mark? How can you do yourself or anyone any good? “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Milton had to ask himself, “If I’ve lost my sight, does my life really have any meaning? What really matters anymore?”
Or what about this. Maybe nothing is taken from you. Maybe your life is just going the way it always has: boring. You do the same stuff day in and day out. And every once and a while you might wonder, “Does any of this matter? Do I matter? What’s the point of all this? No one cares. I don’t even think I care. And I just keep doing it!”
Milton has a answer for you, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Do you want to know a lie? Here you go: that for your life to have any importance it has to leave some kind of world historical mark. Washington and Lincoln mattered. Billy Graham and John Paul II mattered. Even lesser lights like Sam Houston or Lewis and Clark or Bob Dylan or Robert Frost, they mattered. They all did something. They all left a mark. And you? If you were gone tomorrow would the wind just blow away that faint footprint you left and no one would ever know you were there? That’s a lie.
Do you know what eternity wants to know? It only wants to know one thing: were you faithful with what you received? Eternity doesn’t care about whether you left a world historical mark. Were you faithful? That’s the question. Maybe the sum of your life will be working, having family and friends, and then you die. And that is potentially the greatest life ever lived or it is boring wallpaper. It’s up to you. If you are faithful, then you could merely stand and wait and it would be a life worth celebrating into all eternity.
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Tom+