Extreme Servanthood

Recently my brother was telling me about their read aloud about one of my personal heroes, Clara Barton. She was called the “angel of the battlefield” during the Civil War for her nursing work during some of the bloodiest bottles in America’s history. Later, she founded and led the American Red Cross and was the first person to use the Red Cross during times of peace for disaster relief. What stood out to Josiah the most was all the things she did before these things that made her famous and changed the world. Since then I have been reflecting on the anatomy of a world changer, the people whose impacts on the world are felt long after they are gone. Each person’s story is unique, but at the same time there are principles and life choices that show up repeatedly in their lives. Often people who change the world, the pioneer missionaries, the social reformers, the church leaders, did not set out to change the world. They started out to help a few people. There are times when the bigges

“Learn from mistakes; preferably someone else’s.” Unknown It seems that young people in the church (and pretty much everywhere else as well) are quick to stand up and point out what their predecessors did wrong. They overemphasized this… they underemphasized that… they weren’t tough enough on that sin… they were far too lenient on this other one. The battle of the generations is not new to generations X and Y and our baby booming grandparents; the tension was there between our grandparents and their grandparents and will still be there between our grandchildren and us. While peaceful co-existence and respect are important, in many ways, this is the way it’s supposed to be. We stand on the shoulders of giants; we should see farer and clearer than the giants beneath us could have imagined.   We can just never forget that we know more and see more because the generations that come before us are holding us up so high. Truth is not progressive, but our understanding of it is. For example