It is not surprising that in the Gospel stories there are many individuals who are not named, although they may be important characters in the events described. Some people find it easy to pick up and remember the names of even casual acquaintances, but others fail to discover the names of those with whom they have brief or irregular contact. Even if they do, it is unlikely that they will remember their names years in the future.

Because many of the Old Testament books were written down generations after the events they describe and the Gospels some considerable time after Jesus had lived, it was not always easy for the writers to know the identity of all those involved in the events they were writing about. So we have stories of people who have no names but whose memorial lies in the Scriptures.

This series reflects on some of these people. It is a reminder that we do not have to be well-known, or even to have done some great act, to be valued by the Lord. When a lady, not named by Matthew and Mark, came into the house of Simon the leper in Bethany and anointed the head of Jesus with perfume, the Lord commended her.

If we recognise Jesus for who He is and do what we can for Him, then He will remember us although others may forget our name.

What is an ordinary person? Is there such a thing? Psalm 139 reminds us that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made.

Yet James in his letter tells us about Elijah, the great prophet of the Old Testament, and says he was a “man just like us” – in other words, perfectly ordinary.

And that’s what’s so amazing about the people God uses. They are always people “just like us”. In fact it is us, you and me that God wants to use.

What makes anyone useful to God, and part of His army of ordinary people?

Firstly, we have to acknowledge that:

• while we are all special and loved by God,
• while we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made,
• at the same time we are sinners before God.

In his book “Disciplines of a Godly Man”, Kent Hughes mentions people who have been great in some area of life. Churchill was a great speech maker; Edison was a great inventor etc. They had natural talent which they worked at and improved. Spiritually we are all equal before God – we must depend on and trust in the grace of God. That’s the first step to qualifying us for that “army” – a dependence on God’s grace if we are to be useful to Him.

Secondly, we need to see that even the Biblical characters that we now see as great leaders, were nowhere near perfect either.

For instance

• Noah, on one occasion got drunk;
• Moses was not, by his own admission, a good speaker;
• David committed adultery and compounded that by engineering a man’s death;
• Elijah suffered from depression;
• Jonah ran scared;
• Hosea had serious marriage problems;
• Peter had a quick temper yet denied Jesus;
• Paul suffered from something he called his “thorn” and which bothered him continually.

They were all “ordinary” in their own way.

• Amos was a shepherd from a place called Tekoa (where???).
• Jeremiah felt he was far too young and inexperienced when God called him.
• Moses, at the other extreme, was eighty year old before he began his leadership of Israel.
• David was a young shepherd whose father didn’t seem to think should be considered for the job of leading the people of Israel.

The disciples were a mixture of very ordinary men from different walks of life, and who, on the face of it, seemed to have no great talents or gifts. They didn’t even seem to have much in common when you consider one was a tax collector for the Romans, and another was a Jewish “Zealot” – a kind of “freedom fighter” fighting against Roman rule.

What made them all special, what made them useful to God? How did God make them part of His army of ordinary people?