Sunday Reflection – Ordinary Citizens
I came across a quote this week from Charles Dickens, written long ago, and yet it felt as though it could have been written for today.
It spoke about the difference between those in high places and the ordinary citizens who quietly hold to what is right.
“The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush–sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes…. It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their ‘betters’ were derelict.”
And it made me pause.
Because while the world changes—faster, louder, more complex—something deeper does not.
There have always been moments when wrong is excused, explained away, or hidden behind influence and position.
But there have also always been people…
ordinary people…
who simply choose to do what is right.
Not for recognition.
Not for power.
But because it is right.
And when I think about what truly holds a family together…
what strengthens a home…
what steadies a nation…
It is not wealth.
It is not influence.
It is not status.
It is goodness.
It is integrity.
It is the quiet, daily choice to live rightly.
Scripture reminds us:
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” — Proverbs 14:34
Not loud righteousness.
Not public righteousness.
But the steady, faithful kind lived out in everyday lives.
And perhaps that is more powerful than we realize.
Because in the end, it is not the few at the top who determine the strength of a people…
It is perhaps those same ordinary, faithful people who quietly hold things together—one day, one choice at a time.
This is where goodness lives.
Helene
Rosemary Thyme
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