Do You Feel Like a Nobody?

I heard the door open and my husband’s heavy footsteps slowly ascend the steps.

“Hi Honey,” I greeted at the top. “How’d it go?”

We were young with a newborn in a new city, new apartment, and he had a new construction job.

“I swept floors,” he said.

And that whole first week at his construction job, he only swept floors and picked up debris.

He kind of hated it.

He knew so much more about hammering, nailing, measuring, and fitting than most twenty-one-year-olds. He’d had experience building a house with his dad. He knew how to read a blueprint and take it from paper to a real house.

But starting at the bottom with a broom in hand, he learned so much about the company he would work for and its people. He began to understand the ethos of the types of builds they took on, the details involved, and equipment and permits needed. He began to build relationships.

He absorbed the culture in which he afterwards spent several years of profitable and enjoyable employment. But first he swept floors.   

“I’m just a little person,” he tells me often.

I know what he means. He isn’t referring to his height or his position in life. He refers to significance. To me he is a giant and to our children, someone to look up to, but in the scope of time and history, we are both very small. We are little people.

And we are kind of shrinking, if you know what I mean.

Yet, in that tiny speck we occupy, God sees eternal significance. And this is mind boggling whether we are old, young, tall, short, famous or obscure.

God sees us little people.

A contrast between a significant commander of an army of the King of Syria and a little servant girl in 2 Kings 5 intrigues me. Naaman was a great man, honored by the King himself. A valiant leader, a great warrior, a big man in his time.

On one of the Syrian raids, the soldiers captured a little girl. Alone, separated from her family and a nobody in all aspects, she became a servant for Naaman’s wife. She was a little person.

But, God had a plan for that little seemingly insignificant child. He placed her in that time and place for Him to use her in a significant way.

For Naaman was a leper.

“If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! For he would heal him of his leprosy,” the little girl told Naaman’s wife.

When I read this, I can’t help but be struck by the passion of a little person for a much “bigger” one who in effect was an enemy. In her insignificant role, her sweeping floors position, she cared about his suffering. She wanted to help him.

No matter how tiny we may feel in our world, God’s plan for the seemingly insignificant, is purposeful. He uses us little people.

If my husband had been unwilling to sweep floors first, he would not have have had an opportunity to build houses later.

Naaman’s wife told her husband what the little girl said, and Naaman told the king. The king then sent Naaman to find the prophet Elisha.

But when he arrived with his fanfare of horses and chariots, the prophet didn’t come out of his house to meet him. Elisha, a mere prophet, sent a lowly messenger to the door with instructions for the commander.

“Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you, and you shall be clean.” (2 Kings 5:10 ESV)

Naaman’s big person ego was wounded and he was furious.

He’d expected the prophet to “stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy.”

He turned with rage and left.

Naaman’s servants asked, “If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?” (2 Kings 5:13 NIV)

Naaman swallowed his pride and dipped seven times in the Jordan as the prophet commanded.

“And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child.” (2 Kings 5:14 ESV)

That’s the end of the little girl’s story and all we know of her. She was a little player in God’s bigger picture.

What do we know of God’s plan for moving us from one job to another, or changing our financial security, our health scare, or just the annoying detour that compels us to drive another longer route?“If the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it?” (2 Kings 5:13 NIV) Share on X

How often I find myself like Naaman. I become irritated by an inconvenience or demand without ever considering that small incident or imposition might have great significance in the kingdom of God. I forget that sweeping floors heralds greater things beyond my imagination.

“I’m glad I’m just a little person,” my husband tells me when we hear of another well known big person’s crashing fate.

And we agree. Insignificant little people have eternal significance in Jesus’ great plan.