I got depressed the other day looking at mommy blogs. It happens once or twice a year: I indulge myself in a daydream of having hundreds of thousands of followers who think every word I write is fabulously brilliant or witty or touching.
It’s OK—you can laugh.
After I got bored with feeling sorry for myself, I thought about a special midweek church service I once attended. It was breathtakingly lovely, quietly prayerful… and surprisingly empty. Afterward I commented to the pastor that it was a shame more people hadn’t come. “Oh, that doesn’t bother me!” he smiled, “Worship is our gift to God, and we need to give him our best whether there are 10 people out there or 300.”
The memory put my mommy blog wish in perspective. Do you want to write for applause, I asked myself, or for God? Because if you’re doing his work, it’s safe to say he knows exactly who needs to read it. Whether it’s one reader or a million doesn’t matter to him.
I got back to work. Success in the spiritual life isn’t measured in numbers. The metric that matters is how clearly I am focused on doing God’s will.
