And so, we open the door. When we do, the air rushes at us filled with voices of influence, the noble and the horrible all mixed together. We hear the cries of the broken and the taunts of the hateful. There are needy, brave, beautiful, hurting people everywhere we look. We are those people, too. So where do we even begin?
I like to begin with a question: What is the most important thing? Is it educating children? Discipling new believers? Caring for homeless friends? Encouraging young moms? Taking photographs that mean something? Telling stories? Everyone will have a different answer to this question. In my early college days, that bothered me. If what is most important to me isn’t most important to you, then what does that mean about my important things?!
What it means is that I’m passionate about those things and you aren’t. That is all it means. It doesn’t mean I have to convince you that my stuff is important. It means I have a responsibility to act on those things that make me come alive.
We’ve all probably been around passionate people who try to convince us to become passionate about their thing. Maybe we’ve even felt guilty because we don’t feel the same excitement and motivation for a thing the way they do. Maybe we’ve even believed that because they are so convinced of a thing then we ought to feel the same way. We can allow ourselves to be influenced, motivated, and moved by them. We can open our hands and take the gifts they have to offer.
But we do not have to copy them. And we do not have to be them.
This doesn’t mean that someone passionate about education won’t also deliver a meal to a new mom. You might be the president of the PTA and also have a passion for telling authentic, life-changing story. But you probably won’t lead the committee and head up the fundraising and come up with a budget for all of those things. We cannot do all things well. Why do we insist on trying?
Do we trust the Sprit within us to lead us in our paths of influence the way he made us and not the way he made someone else? What is it that makes you come alive? How have you been uniquely created to influence the world you live in? What is your most important thing?
This is day 10 in a series. Read 31 Days to Change the World from the beginning. Go here to see all of the other 31 Day series happening around the internets. Want to have Chatting at the Sky delivered into your email inbox? Subscribe here for free.
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