An Audience of One

Do you ever feel like no one sees or notices the good that you’re trying to do? The positive change you’re trying to accomplish? Me too. All of us do at some time or another. CEO to struggling artist, pastor, mother, parent, and friend. Humanitarian, policemen, poets and kings. We all have this in common: we struggle to feel like we’re really seen, appreciated, and hope against hope, maybe even understood for what it is we’re trying to do.

Not too long ago this was me, and human nature being what it is, probably will be again. Sinking into the end of the bed, barely able to think, I started reading the bedtime story to my kids. My shoulders were heavy with disappointment and my mind was heavy with self-doubt. I showed up there, but so imperfectly. I already felt like I was over-“performing” and under delivering

As I read the story aloud- a mouse with little stature and little significance- my own tired ears started to perk up. This mouse seemed so familiar. While doing everything he could, using every resources he had, working fervently to do something important and meaningful, he was coming up seemingly empty. He was trying to play some music on a ratty ol’ makeshift instrument. No one around him seemed to see or care, or even kind of understand. Some even scoffed. That very evening, that blessed(ish) moment, I felt exactly like that mouse. Haven’t you?

Feeling the weight of my heavy shoulders and the ones I saw mirrored on the paper, I turned a heavy page.

That little unimportant mouse was somber and sullen. Undeterred, but unsettled. Until that is, the king came rolling into town. The one everyone was waiting for. But everybody else missed it. They were too busy. Preparing. Primping. Criticizing.

The king rolled right by unnoticed. The only one that happened to find him was the mouse. Before he knew it, he found himself alone and before the baby king. Ready and not ready, all at once. But he did have a song to play. (Yes, it was a newer take on the drummer boy. And something about it being such a tiny insignificant creature made it hit home even more.)

The crowds were gone and all that mattered was this: the mouse in front of the king, with a song to play. The mere thought of the crowds and scoffers was almost laughable now.

But, wasn’t it always? By now I was sobbing. Of course. Of course of course. It doesn’t matter what the others had to say or not say. It didn’t matter anything about the crowd at all, really. At the end of the day, he played, I play, you play, we all play for an audience of One.

You played your heart out. Music or not. And nobody seemed to notice or care.
But truth is, the One who really matters already sees.

“Audience of One”
Courting the Extraordinary

This king doesn’t care what your size is or what kind of instrument you use. He looks past the details, he sees the effort, and HE knows your heart. That, my friend, is all that really matters.

We’re trying so much to communicate our hearts by our actions.
But truth is, the One who really matters already sees.

We should do whatever it is that we do, not for the masses, nor to please any crowd. But because it beats in our heart, because it’s what we were made to do. And whether you or I understand it yet or not, we don’t do it for them, or for even for us.

You’re not meant to play to the crowd.

Even if you’re trying to help, the crowd is not supposed to be your aim. Which if you think about it, is quite freeing. The crowd is fickle, and harsh. They will love you as long as it serves them. They can become a slave master even before you realize it. They will never be as pleased as we would hope, at least not for long, and certainly not forever. One day you’ll be standing before a king and they’ll be long forgotten.

As we tucked my daughter into bed recently, we said a not uncommon phrase (and it would have been said to our son too, but he was already asleep.) “We’re proud of you.” Her one word question was new. “Why?” I knew the answer right away, and knew it must be clear. (As a “recovering” people pleaser, I feel acutely the importance of differentiating. God helps us not be or raise people whose worth is attached to performance.)

“Those nice things- helping out, being kind to your sibling, sharing from your piggy bank. Those are good things. But just doing them doesn’t matter quite so much. It matters most when it shows and reflects the goodness that’s in your heart,” we told her. We were trying to explain why we were proud of her, which extends BEYOND juts what she does, into the core of WHO she is, which can be reflected in actions. Like our son, too, who delights to pick us wildflowers ;and weeds) for no other reason, than because he loves. He sees their beauty, and wants to share.

I think that God looks at us and the things we do kind of like that, too. What matters more is not just what we do, but why and how we do it. Even if it’s imperfect or we make mistakes, Hr can see right past that to what matters more- our hearts. We can take a hundred good deeds and tie them up in a pretty bow, but it’s the heart that really counts. He doesn’t want us just to go through the motions and check the boxes, to “do the right thing.”

He wants us to “be” the right thing. To be filled with love. To be expressions of who He is, in us. The most beautiful acts might be simple, but when they come from that place of love, where God dwells with us, they are music to His ears.

It’s moving from a place of love instead of towards it. Accepting His love instead of thinking that I need to create it.

So, even if nobody seems to notice or nobody seems to care, it will not go unnoticed, your heart will not be unseen. No seed sown in love is ever wasted. No act of love is ever wasted, no matter how small or seemingly unnoticed. It never is wasted.

What you’re doing is for an audience of One. And trust me when I say, His love can make a garden and He is much more forgiving than the crowd. He understands what the others don’t. He sees your worth, he values the effort that you give.

So don’t do play to the crowd. Play for Him.
Sow seeds of love, and live for Him.