George Bernard Shaw once put up a monument in the church yard at Windlesham in Surrey, England, in memory of Clara and Henry Higgs, a couple who had worked for him at Ayot St. Lawrence in Hertfordshire.

For many years, the monument said, they had kept his home and garden, setting him free to do his work as a dramatist. No playwright, it testifies, was ever better served. Clara and Henry Higgs belong to a great army of people who never do anything big or famous themselves, but whose service is indispensable to others.

The same might be said for the people at Philippi who were the nameless partners of the Apostle Paul, supplying money and gifts for his missionary journeys, and for Epaphroditus, the person who brought their gifts to him while he was in prison. The name of Epaphroditus would have been entirely unknown to history had he not made this visit to Paul in behalf of the people at Philippi.

The names of all the others were lost. Yet Paul looked upon what they had done for him as a "fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God."

How often our own lives are sweetened and sustained by the little acts of human kindness performed by people who names will never go down in history or be inscribed on any plaque. Do you remember, in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the scene in the courtroom after Dmitri has been sentenced to imprisonment in Siberia? He is so exhausted that he falls asleep on a bench, and, when he awakens, he finds that someone has placed a pillow under his head.

He doesn't know who has done it, but he is elated. It is a sign of the goodness of life. He will go to prison, he says, and keep God's name alive there, because he knows that God is in the world. The nameless, selfless act of someone who did him a small kindness is guarantee of that.

Kagewa, the great Japanese labor leader, went to jail for thirteen days during the early strikes in Kobe. He blessed the unknown man who planted a morning glory beside the window of his cell, so that it grew up and kept him company in his loneliness.

Little deeds hold the world together. They may not receive the press that big deeds get, but they are essential to the ongoing of everything.

Paul was an important witness to the Christian faith -- perhaps the most important witness after the birth of the church in Jerusalem. He carried the gospel to kings and governors. He planted churches all over the world of that day. But he could not have done what he did without the kindness of all the nameless people in Philippi and Ephesus and Corinth who cared enough to send him gifts like the one brought by Epaphroditus.

I often think of this in our church. We have majestic worship services and operate a large and extensive program and send significant gifts around the world. But we could not do it without the deeds of countless people who perform their services without recognition or remuneration.

Think of the receptionists and flower arrangers and committee members who do their work without acknowledgment or publicity; the cooks and servers and ushers and teachers who work unselfishly from month to month to make things go, to fill the gaps, to see that the kingdom marches on.