Kenny Rogers sings a song on one of his Christmas albums that has always been a favorite of mine. It comes right after his more famous song “Mary, Did You Know?” It’s entitled “A Soldier’s King” and is about a soldier who has spent his life fighting for causes he hasn’t understood and is now on his way to Bethlehem to give his medal to the newborn King. He’s described as a soldier “the world would soon forget.”
There are lines in the song that apply to more than just that soldier.
The lines go like this: “Some are born to greatness, some are born to fall. / Some are bound to be forgotten like they’d never lived at all / But they’re all born to know him and stand before His light / Like the soldier who found his king tonight.”
Most of the world’s people fall into the category of not being born to greatness, although we are constantly holding before ourselves as examples those who apparently have been born to greatness. And most of us, truth be known, are afraid that we will be forgotten when we die.
There are probably fewer than 20 people in my small southern Virginia ward who have been a member of it as long as I have been-nigh unto 41 years, give or take a few. When several of us get together, we sometimes play “Do you remember so-and-so?” or “Whatever-happened-to-so-and-so?” We laugh about memories, but I think we secretly wonder if anyone will remember us in the years to come after we’re gone.
Will we be one of the soldiers “bound to be forgotten like [we’d] never lived at all”?
One of Those Soldiers
There has been a brother in our ward whom I always considered one of those types of soldiers. I can’t even remember when he became a member of the ward really. He just sort of appeared one day a few years back, alone and pretty much friendless.
He was one of the people who, although I hated to admit it, when he headed towards me in the hallway, I cringed a bit because he was a talker. Boy, could he talk. I knew I was in for a long, relatively one-sided conversation until I could find a reason to break away and hand him off to someone else.
But then I felt guilty because I didn’t want to be mean, and I wasn’t. He was a nice guy, and I knew he was lonely.
“Does he have any family?” we would ask each other.
“I think most of his family has died, but there’s a grandmother or aunt,” would be the usual answer.
He lived alone, but he did go to single adult activities, so I felt a little better and hoped that maybe he would “find somebody.”
Once he did, but then that was over relatively quickly.
He worked as a guard at a prison-sort of scary and courageous, I thought. Then he had to retire because of heart and other medical problems.
But then his health improved and he needed insurance coverage, so he started working as a security guard at the mall. If he saw me there, he would follow me and talk to me as I shopped.
Then he moved to a job as third-shift security guard at the community college where I teach. I couldn’t imagine a lonelier job than that. And I wondered what would happen if he caught someone stealing computers from a computer lab late one dark night? He seemed rather vulnerable with no weapon but a walkie-talkie.
He opened at least three conversations at church talking about the note I had left on one of my classrooms cancelling my class one day.
Scheduling the Cleaning
I worried about him at holidays when my home was filled with family. I reminded the high priests group leader to ask if he had any place to go. I soothed my conscience with the thought that the unknown aunt or grandmother would surely invite him over since I didn’t.
At church the conversations between the brother and me sometimes revolved around his church calling, which was to schedule people to clean the church building. I had occasion to ask him to switch my scheduled cleaning time or to tell him the families I was scheduled to clean with couldn’t come.
He took the calling seriously and worried that he couldn’t do a good job because of the demands of his work. His contribution seemed insignificant to me, as I juggled three church callings, a family, and two part-time jobs. He remained one of the ones I always thought of when I heard the Kenny Rogers song.
Alone at the End
Then one night at the end of November last year he didn’t show up for work at the college and he apparently didn’t answer his phone all the next day. His supervisor drove out to his house and found he had died in his sleep the night before, not surrounded by anyone he loved or anyone who him.
His death upset me because, just as I had always thought of him, he seemed to have died as he had lived-“like they’d never lived at all.”
Several of us from the ward went to his funeral visitation and his funeral. I had a class so I couldn’t stay for the funeral, but I wanted to. Others from his hometown were there, and others from the college. There weren’t a lot, but they were friends and they wanted to show they had cared. And, yes, there was a cousin from Kentucky and his great-aunt we had wondered about. Both expressed their gratitude over and over for our coming.
Not Forgotten
But I proved myself wrong in the end.
What I didn’t remember about him most was his seeming aloneness or his annoying verbosity. What I remembered most was the day I was scheduled to clean the church and the other family didn’t show up.
I was there alone with the whole church to clean.
But he came. He came after his job ended for the day to see if I needed help, and he stayed to help me. His did his calling the best he could. No, he magnified his calling.
For those couple of hours, to me at least, he was “born to greatness.”
I’m sure too that when he stood before his King, he wasn’t forgotten.
Susan Elzey is a freelance writer in beautiful southern Virginia. Her novel “Miracle of the Christmas Star” may be purchased on Amazon.com.
JadonFebruary 13, 2013
I was just looking over some old emails and found this one which I had saved. I smiled as I read this article once again. So good. A keeper for me. I was surprised there were no comments and belatedly just wanted to say how much this article impressed me. Years ago one brother in my ward spoke to me about the "unknown soldiers" To him, they were the people who laboured in callings which most of the ward would not know they held. I think he mentioned this that Sunday because I had one of those callings. I was a Ward Financial clerk and had been for many years. Suited me just fine actually to work quietly in the background. I think there are many people like that. People who don't worry if they seem to be "forgotten". The One they serve has not forgotten because they did not forget Him.