November 4 | Moments Almanac | Realms

Welcome to Moments Almanac for November 4th. There's a strange thing about the work that we do. We spend enormous amounts of time on things that seem terribly important at the moment. The report, the article, the meeting, the argument, the project that absolutely positively has to be finished by Friday. And then Friday comes and goes. And a few years later, almost nobody remembers it. James Montgomery spent much of his life producing words that people read eagerly and then threw away. He was a newspaper editor, and a rather troublesome one. And on this day in 1771, James Montgomery was born in Scotland. His parents were Moravians and missionaries, and they expected their son might eventually enter the ministry. He didn't. At least not in the way they probably imagined. Montgomery became a writer and eventually the editor of a newspaper in Sheffield, England, and he discovered rather quickly that words can get you into trouble. He wrote about political reform. He spoke against slavery. He advocated for children who were being sent into chimneys as climbing boys, and twice his newspaper work landed him in prison. Apparently, nineteenth century editors did not have the luxury of simply turning off the comments. Montgomery believed that words matter. They could expose injustice, they could defend people who had little power, they could challenge governments, they could even send an editor to jail. But strangely enough, the words Montgomery wrote that survived the longest were not the fiery newspaper editorials, they were his hymns. You may know some of them. Prayer is the soul's sincere desire. In the hour of trial and one that appears every Christmas, Angels from the Realms of Glory. Montgomery reportedly was once asked which of his poems he thought would survive him. His answer was remarkably modest. None of them, he said, except perhaps for a few of his hymns. He was right. The newspapers yellowed, the political controversies faded, the arguments that once seemed so urgent became paragraphs in history books. But somewhere generations later, people are still standing in churches and singing his words. I love that. Because sometimes we are very poor judges of which parts of our lives will matter the most. We assume it will be the big thing, the public thing, the achievement with our name printed across the top. But perhaps it will be something smaller a prayer you prayed with a frightened child, a sentence you wrote in a card, a lesson you taught in a Sunday school class, a kindness nobody applauded, a song you sang beside someone in the hospital, a word about Jesus that lodged somewhere in another person's heart. Scripture says in Psalm 145, one generation shall praise thy works to another. Faith being handed forward, one voice teaching another voice to sing. One generation telling the next generation what God has done. James Montgomery probably never imagined that people more than two centuries after his birth gathering at Christmas would be singing Angels from the realms of glory, but they do. And maybe that's worth remembering today. You can't always know which part of your life will survive. You can't know the sinn someone will remember, which kindness they will repeat, which prayer will keep echoing, which small act of faithfulness God will carry farther than you ever imagined. Much of what seems terribly important today will eventually disappear. But grace has a remarkable way of preserving the right things. So do the work in front of you. Speak the truth, defend those who need defending, write the words, say the prayer, sing the hymn, and leave the question of what survives to God. And that's Moments Almanac for November 4th. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.