Perspective on change

This is probably old stuff for many of you, but I haven’t seen this for many, many years. Isn’t it interesting that the Lord dropped this into my path just today after I had written about trying to make changes in Europe? God is good!

"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world." Author unknown

Encouragement

Too often, I am most critical of myself regarding the impact (or lack of impact) that I am having in this wonderful, mysterious world of “missions.” (I put “missions” in quotes because it truly seems so normal to me to do what I’m doing that I don’t feel like I’m doing mission work, but rather simply serving the Lord in the way that He has determined, in the place He has determined and the time He has determined - but that’s another discussion altogether!)

I’ve begun to learn some things about myself over these past 49 years (yep, just had another one of those birthday things). One of those is the tendency to get down on myself when I am really tired and worn out and think, “What the heck am I doing here anyway? What impact am I really having on the lives of Slovaks and others here in Europe? What difference would there be if I left today?” I often feel like the proverbial person who puts his finger into a pool of water to see what kind of hole is left when he removes his finger.

However, let me put another spin on that “proverb” because I think that we’re looking at it from a skewed perspective...

It’s not the hole that’s not there when you take out your finger, but it’s the effect - the ripples! What we don’t realize is the impact of the ripples that occur from sticking our finger into the water. That impact - in the metaphor/illustration - is very quickly not visible to the naked eye, but the impact is nevertheless long-term.

I’m dribbling words here. All I wanted to say, really, was that in the past few weeks I have been blessed to catch a few “smidgins“ of encouragement that I want to pass on to you over the next couple of days:

A young lady came to me not too long ago sharing a desire to reach more young people in her home country of Serbia. She thought that maybe through some of the camps that we have done in the past that we could help to have an impact.

Through conversation with her, we put her in contact with Athletes in Action in Holland, primarily because of her interest in sports. As a result, she attended their training and now has teams coming out to Serbia to do 2 camps to reach out to Romany Serbs and other young Serbs! She was so fired up and so thankful to me for putting her in touch with AIA.

It seemed such a small thing on one hand. On the other hand, that is exactly why the Lord brought us to Europe - to equip, encourage and resource people to reach the 250 million young men and women of Europe!

God is sooo good!