Back in 2003, Jeanette Hardage started a train of thought that she never finished. She began an essay with, “I have long thought that somebody should write about God’s nobodies.” Contrasting them with Biblical “Somebodies” such as Moses, David, and Paul, she observed that Paul greets numerous mostly-unsung heroes in his letters. For instance, in Romans 16, Paul describes a couple dozen people as servants of the church, hard workers, fellow countrymen, dear friends, converts, fellow prisoners, and co-workers in Christ. Clearly, Jeanette suggested, these people were really Somebodies as well, not only in Paul’s sight, but also in the sight of God. In addition to beginning an essay, she also wove this thought into the lesson for a Sunday School class that she led in late 2003 on I Corinthians 16, where Paul also names several lesser known people and praises them for their service, saying that “such men deserve recognition.”
Jeanette’s unfinished article and class notes suggest that she found comfort in the idea that God values the “nobodies.” She counted herself among that legion, saying in her draft essay that she was “surely a Nobody in the eyes of many.”
One could take issue with Jeanette’s characterization of herself as a “nobody.” She tended to play down her own abilities and achievements, calling herself a “beginning writer” in 2002—that is, 35 years after her first work was published, and after seeing dozens of her own articles, book reviews, and poems in print. And in business correspondence, she called her biography of Mary Slessor “a semi-scholarly work,” even though an eminent scholar called it “undoubtedly the best biography of Slessor so far produced” (Dr. Andrew Walls, in the book’s foreward), a sentiment that was echoed by other reviewers as well. And can anyone with a dedicated website truly be called a “nobody?”
Regardless, we can all take to heart the lesson toward which Jeanette’s unfinished article was beginning to point: every member of the body of Christ is as important as the others; and whether or not we achieve earthly fame, all of our efforts to serve God are appreciated and valued.