Unhistoric Acts

I have thought a lot over the last few years about the good but largely anonymous lives of millions of people scattered over the earth. They live quietly, and die just as quietly. They go to graves everywhere to silently await the resurrection. There is often a memorial service of some kind depending on custom in their culture. There is sadness, and sometimes heartbreak if death is untimely. The living remember them briefly, but soon, they are all but forgotten by nearly everyone as the world rushes onward. Cemeteries the world over are full of such unheralded people. Some of them are visited on Memorial Day by relatives and friends, but after a generation or two, they are mostly left alone.

In his book, The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems, James Thompson says:

Mankind is destined to extinction. . . . There is nothing we can do. We have no personal life beyond the grave. There is no God. Fate knows no wrath nor ruth [compassion].

Much of the world seems to be persuaded that the lot of mankind in general is eternal anonymity. They are convinced that we, for the most part, leave no footprints in the sands of time.

In counterpoint, many others (including our Lord and Savior) hold the opposite view. The Scriptures tell us that the Lord knows us and remembers us. In Matthew 10:29-31 we read:

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father .But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Chieko N. Okazaki, in her book, Aloha! said:

We're all sparrows, neither very important nor irreplaceable in the world's eyes. But God knows each one of us. He sprinkles the crumbs for us to eat. He lets us perch on his fingers. His hands make a safe place for us to nestle down.

George Bernard Shaw:

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

Susan W. Tanner, Young Women General President, said in the General Young Women Meeting on March 25, 2006:

Dorothea is the heroine in one of my favorite novels, Middlemarch. She is remembered at the end of the book for her quiet, selfless deeds to family and friends. It says: ‘Her full nature … spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’” (George Eliot, Middlemarch [1986], 682).

The small unhistoric acts you perform each day are part of the great goodness that largely goes unnoticed and unmarked by a cynical and jaded world. But always remember that the Lord notices, remembers, and His heavenly recorders incsribe your efforts in the eternal record of mankind. You have a part in the Great Plan of the Eternal God (Alma 34:9). You are of infinite worth.