By Brian Britton French
In a world that measures success by bank balances, stock portfolios, and the square footage of vacation homes, there exists a quiet army of ordinary saints who have made a different calculation. They have decided that a human being in need is worth more than a seven-figure retirement account.
They have looked at the allure and comfort of wealth and answered, “No, thank you. My treasure is elsewhere.” These are the people who do God’s work—not with halos, but with calloused hands, tired feet, and hearts that somehow still find room to break open for one more stranger.
You meet them when life is falling apart, and strangely, that is when they are at their best. The hospice worker who sits in dim rooms where the air smells of antiseptic and impending farewell. While some rush away from death, terrified of its honesty, she walks straight into it. She holds hands that are growing cold, she listens to stories that will die with the teller. The pay is modest, the hours brutal, the grief cumulative. She could have chosen a dozen careers that would have kept her farther from sorrow. Instead she chose the bedside of the leaving, because someone should be there when the light goes out, and she decided that someone would be her.
I have never met a veterinarian I didn’t like. There is something in the profession that seems to screen for gentleness. They spent eight grueling years in school, accrued debt that could buy a small house, and emerged with the skills to be a “real” doctor—human patients, higher fees, fancier offices. But they looked at the earning charts and then looked at a trembling beagle with an abscessed tooth, or a sixteen-year-old cat who just wanted one more summer in the sun, and they thought: I would rather kneel on cold tile and whisper “Good girl” while I place an IV in a paw the size of a half-dollar.
They euthanize beloved pets while the family sobs into fur that will never move again, and they cry too, because loving animals means you never fully harden your heart. Their stethoscopes have listened to more grateful tail thumps than human thank-yous, and they consider that a fair trade.
Then there are the workers with disabilities who stock shelves, run cash registers, or stand in the December wind ringing a Salvation Army bell. Simple tasks are Everest for them, yet they summit every day with a concentration that shames the rest of us scrolling on our phones. The girl with Down syndrome who carefully counts change back to me teaches me more about dignity in thirty seconds than any TED Talk ever could.
I think of my Black landscaper —Lawrence —who mows my lawn in the Florida summer heat that could bake bread on a car hood. He labors like a man who knows the dignity of work is not in the wage but in the doing, and that smile. The smile that is so big, honest and beautiful you can’t help but be a little awe struck. Some people insides materialize on their outside.
And nurses—God forever bless nurses. The one who kneels to find a vein that keeps rolling away, who feels in her own arm the sting she is about to cause, who hears “I’m scared” and answers with a steadiness she may not feel. She learns the names of patients who will forget hers by morning, charts on people who will die before she clocks out, celebrates tiny victories no one else notices. The world calls her shift “work.” She calls the trembling hand that reaches for hers “church.”
There are millions of these quiet saints. The teacher buying school supplies with grocery money. The mechanic who fixes the single mom’s car and charges only for parts. A friend that shows up enthusiastic and early when you ask for help moving (again). The foster parent who makes room for one more broken heart.
They have counted the cost—lower earnings, earlier exhaustion, disregard from those climbing to reach corner offices – Inflation eats at their modest wages, immigration devalue their labor, culture whispers that they are suckers, but they keep showing up.
They have discovered the outrageous secret that joy is not located in what we grasp but in what we give away. So look for them. Really look. The next time the hospice worker adjusts your mother’s pillow, meet her eyes and say thank you until she believes it.
When the vet cries with you over the dog who didn’t make it, put your hand on their shoulder. Tip Aubrey the check out girl not out of pity but out of reverence. Ask Lawrence how his one week a year vacation was and watch his face light up like a Christmas tree. Tell the nurse her kindness is the best medicine you received all day.
Because they spend their lives making us the priority, the least we can do is return the favor for thirty seconds at a time. Let them see in our eyes what they have taught us in their actions: that they are treasured, that they are seen, that in a world starving for love, they are the bread.
For they do God’s work… for which we should say, amen.
About the Author
