Pastor Matt Kruse of 7 Mile Road Church near Boston reflects on turning 40 and being spectacularly unspectacular for the kingdom:

I am thankful for men and women who leave a global, historical mark for Jesus.

But for most of us, life will be a lot less spectacular.

And we should be good with that. Wait, thrilled is a better word.

Question: Instead of obsessing about changing the world, what if we just gave ourselves to living in glad obedience to Jesus in the trenches of an ordinary life?

For me, this means:

loving a particular wife (the one I vowed to love, in all of her awesomeness and sinfulness)

raising two sons and two daughters to know and fear and love God with all they've got

loving my neighbors as they are given to me in different seasons of life

plying a trade as well as I can (which happens to be, in my case, for some reason, planting a church-planting church that I hope will result in the next 10 years with seeing 1500 Bostonians believing the gospel together, which I am excited about, and which I don't think betrays the thrust of this post: I am not saying don't be ambitious about what the Spirit might do through you; I am saying don't miss the glory of a well-lived, simple life.)

working hard to be a faithful witness to the grace and glory of Jesus in greater Boston for however many years he gives me.

In other words, Matthew Kruse's "ceiling," even if I hit it, will not make for a very sexy Wikipedia page.

What it will make for is some small number of people who were not ignored by me on the way to some unattainable pipe dream, but instead loved and compelled to believe and revel in Jesus and His Gospel. I need to be content with that.