Faithful With a Few Things First

In 1937, a twenty-five-year-old social worker named Dorothy Height walked into a meeting at the Harlem YWCA and met Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the National Council of Negro Women. Bethune saw something in the young woman and invited her into the organization. Height accepted — and began two decades of quiet, faithful service before anyone outside those meeting rooms knew her name.

She organized local programs. She advocated for fair employment. She showed up, year after year, doing the unglamorous work of building coalitions and lifting up communities. Then in 1957, the NCNW entrusted her with the presidency. She would hold that post for forty years, championing voter registration drives and launching the "Wednesdays in Mississippi" program in 1964 to build bridges between Black and white women during Freedom Summer. When President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, Height was eighty-two years old and still serving.

In Matthew 25:21, Jesus says, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things." Dorothy Height's life illustrates this truth: twenty years of unseen faithfulness prepared her for four decades of extraordinary leadership.

The question for every believer is not whether God has given you a platform, but whether you are faithful with what He has already placed in your hands. The servant who tends the small field with devotion is the one the Master trusts with the harvest.