The storm clouds moved in quickly, leaves rustling and branches swaying overhead as I stared at the gravestones for my grandparents. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I stood beneath the old tree, memories playing in my mind as a phrase rolled like ticker tape below: We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.

I shared the story behind that sentence earlier this summer, unaware that words spoken over me ten years ago would become a prayer of thanks this fall.

“Because of the seeds sown generations ago,” I wrote a few months ago, “we’re able to find a little bit of respite from the heat. Because others came before us, watering and tending with care, we get to rest and enjoy beauty we can’t sign our names to. Our right-now lives are changed because someone somewhere at some point gave sacrificially and showed up faithfully. Once upon a time, someone planted a seed, and now we sit in its shade.”

I took one last look before turning to leave, moved by the dancing limbs of the tree that stretched toward stones engraved with names dear to me, the familiar phrase suddenly made new in a cemetery.

I sit and rest and live in shade made from seeds my grandparents planted long ago, but the story stretches back further, because they could say the same about those who came before, and before, and before all the way back to “in the beginning.”

Little did I know a similar reminder waited for me in a graveyard several states away.

Rain fell in sheets against the windshield as I started the car and continued on my road trip north. By the time I stopped in Boston, eager to stretch my legs and explore for the afternoon, a cobalt blue sky stretched overhead, not a cloud in sight.

I toured Paul Revere’s house, meandered along picturesque cobblestone streets, wandered through the spacious Boston Common, and stumbled upon Granary Burying Ground – a historic cemetery on the Freedom Trail. Established in 1660, thousands of slate gravestones hold their ground. Many of the engraved words are barely legible now, and most of the stones are tilting from time, but the place is peaceful, quiet, and wouldn’t you know it – shaded by trees planted in 1830.

I strolled slowly, pausing to read the historical markers, until a note on one took my breath away. For many women at this time, it stated, the only historical evidence of their lives would be their tombstones.

Their stories are, in nearly every way, lost to history.

My eye caught on a simple gravestone nearby, nearly empty of words, just “M. Sarah Daggett 1789” etched on slate that has stood for over two hundred years.

I don’t know who she was, who she loved, or what she did. I don’t know what her days held or what stories she could tell. But I do know that I stood silent, staring, struck by the truth that even if the only thing that says we were here is a tombstone, our ordinary lives still leave a legacy – and somehow, two hundred years later, someone we’ll never know might be encouraged by the reminder that ordinary does not equal unimportant.

And that is worth something.

I continued on, a list of questions I’d love to ask Sarah growing in my mind, until the path curved toward a large memorial for Paul Revere. Placed there in the 19th century, it stands next to the tiny original headstone that simply reads “Revere’s tomb.” The contrast in size was startling, but side by side they preach a silent sermon: small does not equal insignificant.

Surrounded by history and thousands of everyday stories lost to time, I couldn’t help but think of how Scripture tells the same story time after time: We have a Savior who seeks out the unseen, who stops for the one, who paints parable pictures with ordinary objects, and highly values the small things.

The Samaritan woman at the well.
A mustard seed.
The woman who bled for twelve years.
A lost coin.
Nathaniel. Zacchaeus. Bartimaeus.
A lamp under a bowl.

I didn’t set out looking for lessons in graveyards, but they found me all the same, three reminders to carry into however many days remain in the dash between years that will one day mark a stone with my own name.

We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.
Ordinary ≠ unimportant.
Small ≠ insignificant.

If God cares about the smallest of things, if He values the ordinary, then the beautiful truth is that our mundane moments matter. What seems small and ordinary to us, what is unseen and unknown by others, actually holds weight. It changes the course of history. It’s true for Paul Revere, a name made famous centuries later, but it’s just as true for every Sarah Daggett, every name we’ve never heard and will never know. They impacted someone, who impacted someone, who impacted someone. Seed, root, stem, trunk, branch, leaf.

Wherever these words find you today, walking a cobblestone street or washing dishes at the kitchen sink, may they be a small, simple reminder: your beautiful, ordinary right-now life matters.

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering.”
Romans 12:1 MSG

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