I walked in the front door. I didn’t notice it at first, but then slowly it sank in. This is a really clean facility.
I began to take notice of the things I didn’t notice at first. The shining woodwork. The vacuum patterns in the rugs and carpets. The view through the glass windows and doors, undisturbed by smudges and fingerprints. The lingering smell of Lysol in the bathroom. The polished tiles in the fellowship hall. There were places I didn’t go, like the kitchen. But I knew, based on the rest of the building, that I could trust the cleanliness there too.
Then I noticed something else. Everything worked. No “out of order” signs attached to bathroom stalls. Doors swung quietly on their hinges. No lights were out. The temperature was comfortable.Today I celebrate you: the people whose ministry in their church is cleaning and maintenance. You are the invisible ones. No one notices you until you fail to do your ministry. As long as things are clean and working on Sunday mornings, people do not really notice. They take you for granted. They do not know that you took hours out of your busy week to show up at church when no one was there to clean bathrooms, vacuum carpets, wash floors, and replenish supplies. Probably no one thanked you. Yet you remained faithful.
No one knows how many cobwebs you wiped away that week or how many smudges you cleaned off the glass. No one counted how many weeds you pulled from the flower beds. No one counted how many dish towels you took home to wash after the last church dinner. No one saw how many coffee spills and muddy footprints you washed off the floor. You simply did it because it was your ministry.
