Conversation with Josiah

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 biggest hindrance to big change is big dreams. People become so obsessed with their big thing, their “finest moment” as Winston Churchill put it, that they fail to see the importance or the impact of the work set before them.

One of my favorite examples of someone whose little choice changed the world was D.L. Moody’s Sunday school teacher when he was a young man. One day, the teacher was walking passed the shoe store where Dwight worked, and decided to stop in and say “hi” to his student. He went into the storeroom of the shop and there surrounded by shoes, he led the nineteenth century’s most important evangelist to Christ. He was just a guy who agreed to teach a Sunday school class and cared for his students and the world was changed by the “little thing” he did to stop and say “hi” to a friend.

The ultimate goal of a Christian is not to change the world, but that through changing lives, they may change eternities. One of the few geometric terms that make sense to me is the ray, which is a line that has a beginning but no end. It’s the best description of a human life I know. As created beings we each have a point in time when we begin, but as far as we can understand scripture, none of us have an ending. We are immortal creatures inhibiting a mortal world.