I am but one...

Over Thanksgiving I read D. A. Carson's little biography of his father, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (Crossway, 2008). Carson's father was a missionary church planter in Montreal, Canada who labored through difficult circumstances and saw little visible fruit. Near the end, Carson shares this quote from his Dad's journal that gives some clue to his father's perseverance:

When I was in Sunday School as a boy at Calvary Baptist Church, there was a saying hanging from one of the walls where everyone could see it:

"I am but one, but I am one;

I cannot do everything, but I can do something;

what I can do, I ought to do;

and what I ought to do, God helping me, I will do."

"She has done what she could" (see John 12:1-8; Mark 14:3-9) (p. 143).

JTR