Sometime in the mid-sixth century BC, one of the greatest empire builders of the age, king Croesus of Lydia, reportedly met the Athenian lawgiver Solon. One of the legendary Seven Sages of Greece, Solon was at the time on a self-imposed sightseeing tour abroad, and Croesus was eager to meet him and get his stamp of approval.
At the height of his power at the time, Croesus gave Solon a tour of his treasuries, palaces, and all things spectacular he could imagine. At the end of this grand tour, he asked his honored guest a very simple question: Who is the happiest (or, more literally, most blessed) of all men? The answer, to Croesus’ utter shock, was not the one he expected.
Instead of praising Croesus’ many blessings through which he had just paraded, Solon went off on an unexpected (and, to Croesus, deeply frustrating) tale about this nobody Athenian man, who was just an ordinary plain old boring citizen. This guy loved his city, loved his family, raised sons who also loved the city. Then one day, when Athens was at war, he fought honorably for the city and helped it win the war. He died in battle and was buried on the battlefield—a final honor and exclamation mark capping a life well lived.
The flabbergasted Croesus asked Solon to name a runner-up: who’s the second happiest of men? So Solon told him a tale of two brothers who had been very loyal to their family in their everyday life. Then one time, they yoked themselves up to a chariot instead of oxen during an emergency, in order to deliver their mother, a priestess, to the temple right on time for a religious ceremony.
To Solon, these were the lives best lived: lives of very ordinary people who didn’t have anything special about them. Except they faithfully served others day-in, day-out, seeing needs and filling them without expecting any sort of fanfare in return.
We can laugh at Croesus, who had an awfully hard time understanding that there are more important things in life than wealth and power and various other ways of showing off these assets. But more often than not, if asked to name life goals and dreams, we readily get in touch with our own inner Croesus, even if (hopefully) in a less crass way. We dream big—both in defining our prosperity and happiness, and in terms of what we think we must accomplish to feel successful or blessed. That’s a lot of pressure, much of it self-imposed. Years down the road, most of us feel like we never achieved what we wanted. Such spiritual ground, focused on what is lacking rather than what is present in our lives, is perfectly primed for a mid-life crisis of ennui and depression.
But what if we’re going about this process of goal-setting all wrong? What if the best thing we can do—in our family life, in church and in our walk with God, and in our service to the democracy—is just show up?
That is precisely the argument that theologian and editor Drew Dyck makes in his latest book, Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything. Big dreams of changing the world came naturally during seminary and life BC (Before Children), he recollects. Then real life hit like a tsunami—in the form of what seems like the usual American dream: marriage, a job, kids. Overwhelmed by this disconnect between lofty dreams and the difficulties of surviving each grueling marathon of a day, Dyck wrote this book to argue for the simplest yet, it turns out, most Biblical goal of all: showing up.
Just keep plodding without ceasing. This is, first and foremost, Christ-like behavior in a literal sense. Sure, Jesus performed some extraordinary miracles during his earthly ministry. But most of the time, what he did was just live life with other people around him, showing up in the flesh in the midst of ordinary activities, joyful and mournful. That is the significance of the Incarnation, of God becoming flesh and dwelling with other people for over three decades of ordinary life.
We have been created for community—with God and with other people. Showing up acknowledges this truth in action, and everything about this admission is good for us. Just think of the people in your life who have shown up, perhaps unasked and unexpectedly, when you needed them most. And think of the joy it gives you to show up for others or when others show up for you.
Years ago, we were shocked and devastated to learn at a routine twenty-week ultrasound that the baby did not have a heartbeat. Because my body was not showing any signs of going into labor naturally to deliver this dead child, I had to stay at the hospital overnight to be induced. Dan, meanwhile, had to scramble to drive an hour home to pack an overnight bag for our two older children and drop them off with friends. Unexpectedly, later this afternoon, another mom from our church just showed up in my hospital room. She herself had delivered a stillborn baby twenty years prior, and wanted to drive an hour to the hospital to be with me as I was facing the same.
Dyck includes plenty of such stories from his own life and from those of others in this book. But even more stories involve the daily slog—or plod. These are not just tales of heroic rescues or service in emergencies. Rather, these are stories of people doing the same seemingly small thing to serve others over and over and over for decades—because that is what faithfulness is.
It looks unheroic, humble, and messy—like my husband patiently wrangling very tired kids night after night through their hour-long (or even longer) extravagant bath and bedtime routine. Showing up is lovingly answering the umpteenth call from a tired child for one more sip of water or one more story with a gentle yes, tucking the child in. Or, an example Dyck tells, a teacher who attended for a full year all the sports games for a struggling student in her class. Such showing up sends a message to its recipient, whatever her age: you matter. You are loved.
Such daily showing up, Dyck argues, may not look like much at first glance, but it is quietly revolutionary. It is the key for healthy marriage and family life, for building friendships, and for growing spiritually. This takes thoughtful scheduling, Dyck realized. In the days of working from home, especially, it is easy to let work squeeze out everything else. And sure, you do need to show up for work, but perhaps the biggest takeaway of the book is that showing up for people is most important. But this kind of regular, slow-plodding kind of showing up also means setting the pressure bar lower for ourselves.
Take Bible reading, for instance. Every year, Dyck notes, people set absurd goals for the new year, which they shortly jettison feeling like failures, because they just couldn’t keep up. But what if one set a lower goal—five minutes a day instead of fifteen or twenty? It is more doable, and things that are doable make it easier for us to keep showing up. And so, just showing up for something that sounds almost pathetically easy—five minutes!—ends up yielding beautiful fruit when done over the course of years. And the same goes for friendships and family relationships. You don’t have to plan anything extravagant. You just need to be present and listen.
On the flip side, Dyck notes towards the end of the book, you can’t be all things to all people. You can’t show up to everything and for everyone. Stewarding time and choosing into whom and what to pour your time and energy is both responsible and wise.
The premise of seemingly lowering expectations to serve better, more consistently over the course of a lifetime is good for one’s family life and for spiritual life and faith walk. This is how families thrive and churches grow. But I think there are additional related applications here that aren’t the main focus of Dyck’s book, but which readily stem from it: the importance of showing up for one’s community and our democracy.
This brings us back to the example that Solon gave Croesus: the most blessed man of all, Croesus said, was a good citizen in the Athenian democracy, a guy who just consistently showed up for his family, community, and nation. That’s all.
In this social media-saturated age, we are too easily seduced by glitz and glamor. But then, long before Tik Tok, so was Croesus, who was the rare person who not only valued all the fancy things but also possessed them all, large empire included (at least for a time). But the encouraging reality is that to live a life of service to others that is good both in earthly terms and in transcendent ones, we don’t have to conquer any empires, make millions, or find the cure for cancer. We just have to be faithful in little ways, every day. We have to show up.