To be utterly unnoticeable...

"We have a tendency to look for wonder in our experience, and we mistake heroic actions for real heroes. It's one thing to go through a crisis grandly yet quite another to go through life glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, and no one paying even the remotest attention to us. If we are not looking for halos, we at least want something that will make people say, 'What a wonderful man of prayer he is!' or 'What a great woman of devotion she is!' ...To be utterly unnoticeable requires God's spirit in us making us absolutely humanly His. The true test of a saint's life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the level of human life." 

- Oswald Chambers 

 I don't know about you, but I can relate to these words.  Thomas Aquinas said that the four typical substitutes for God are wealth, pleasure, power, and honor.  I - like all of us - am immune to none of these, and constantly struggle with a few in particular.  I've grown quite adept in the illusionary arts - my transgressions are not so extroverted that they gleam for all to see, yet they are there, subtly feeding my ego.  Once in awhile I am given the grace of recognizing the truth of my motivations, what is behind the curtain.  I don't like what I find there, yet I am unwilling to ask it to leave.   In all honesty, I'm looking at it as I write this...

This quote reminds me of a scene in the wonderful C.S. Lewis book "The Great Divorce".  The premise of the book is that there are many living in Hell, but don't know it.  By chance some take a mystical bus ride to heaven - again unawares of the truth of the situation.  The visitors see many fanciful things there, glimpses of the wonders of a blessed life...

“First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done...But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.

“Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”
“And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?”
“Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”
“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”
“They are her sons and daughters.”
“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”
“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”
“Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?”
“No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”
“And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.”
“They are her beasts.”
“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”
“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”
I looked at my Teacher in amazement.
“Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce