Andrew

Andrew is the picture of all those who labor quietly in humble places. Not with eye service as men pleasers but as servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. Andrew is not the pillar like Peter, James and John, he is a humbler stone. He could have anticipated the sentiment of the poet Christina Rossetti who wrote: "Give me the lowest place, not that I dare ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died that I might live and share Thy glory by Thy side. Give me the lowest place or if for me the lowest place is too high, then make one more low where I may sit and see my God and love Him so." That's Andrew. I mean, after all, he was one of the original two called and yet he wasn't in the inner three but it didn't seem to bother him. He was always Peter's brother. He's one of those rare people who's willing to take second place. One of those rare people who wants to be in support. Or one of those rare people who doesn't mind being hidden as long as the work is done. He is the kind of man that all leaders depend on. He's the kind of person that everyone knows is the backbone of every ministry. The cause of Christ is dependent, beloved, on self-forgetting souls who are content to occupy a small sphere and an obscure place, free from self-seeking ambition and yet he will sit on the throne judging the tribes of Israel. Daniel Mc Lean, a Scotsman, who has a special affection for Andrew who has become the patron saint of Scotland, writes about his beloved Apostle these words: "Gathering together the traces of character found in Scripture found about Andrew we find neither the writer of an epistle nor the founder of a church nor a leading figure in the apostolic age but simply an intimate disciple of Jesus Christ, ever anxious that others should know the spring of spiritual joy and share the blessing he so highly prized. A man of very moderate endowment, who scarcely redeemed his early promise, simple minded and sympathetic without either dramatic power or heroic spirit. Yet he had that clinging confidence in Christ that brought him into that inner circle of the twelve. A man with deep religious feeling with little power of expression. He was more magnetic than he was electric. Better suited for the quiet walks of life than the stirring thoroughfares. Yes, Andrew is the Apostle of the private life.