Middlemarch (1871–1872),George Eliot

1. What good works done by others without fanfare have inspired you?

When I served as editor-in-chief of a magazine for Christ-followers, our editorial team felt constantly pulled to attract readers by running a big-name profile as the cover story. Judging by “clicks,” we knew people are often more compelled by celebrity than by depth or skill at handling Scripture. Yet we labored to resist that temptation, as most of our readers needed us to emphasize laboring in obscurity, serving the one who promised reward for a cup of water offered in Jesus’s name.

2. Can you think of a time when you did a good work without thanks and resented the ingratitude? Was the ingratitude a flaw of character for the person served or your prideful perception of events—or both?

How often we need to be reminded that we are to aspire to the quiet life, not to fame; that glamour is not goodness; that honor is not humility; that ability to speak is not ability to communicate what matters; that the person of the hour is not apt to be the person of the ages.

3. What’s your favorite ending to a book, and why?

In an online writing group, someone asked participants, “What’s your favorite ending to a book?” One of the contributors offered the same answer I was going to give: the last paragraph of Middlemarch. As literary endings go, it’s not flashy. Some critics find it disappointing. But I consider it profound. The book concludes with this description of its main character:

Dorothea’s full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, 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.

Filmmaker Terrence Malick borrowed Eliot’s phrase “a hidden life” for the title of his 2019 biodrama about Franz Jägerstätter. The film’s protagonist was an Austrian farmer who refused to serve in the Nazi army during World War II. Jägerstätter’s faith motivated his decision to stand against the regime, even when doing so meant execution.

If the Lord tarries, then it may be that, two hundred years from now, few people will be lining up to visit Franz Jägerstätter’s grave. But lives like his remind us to devote ourselves to serving faithfully, even in obscurity—to do good works in secret, from bathing the infirm day after day to silent prayer. Because in this life, in ways we cannot see, the effect of faithfulness lived out in relative anonymity is the growing good of the world.

4. To what do you aspire?

5. To what good works in secret do you sense the Lord nudging you to action?

For more devotionals in this series, click here.

About the Contributors

Sandra L. Glahn

In addition to teaching on-campus classes, Dr. Glahn teaches immersive courses in Italy and Great Britain. She is a multi-published author of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist, and speaker who advocates for thinking that transforms, especially on topics relating to art, marriage, and first-century backgrounds as they relate to gender. Dr. Glahn’s more than twenty-five books reveal her interests in bioethics, sexual ethics, and biblical women. She has also written twelve Bible studies in the Coffee Cup Bible Study series. A regular blogger at Engage, bible.org’s site for women in Christian leadership, Dr. Glahn is also a Substack writer and co-founder of The Visual Museum of Women in Christianity. She is married to Gary and they have a married daughter and one granddaughter.