You Can Make A Difference

We live in an accomplishment-driven culture. If you were asked to describe your friends, you might say something like “Josh is a lawyer” or “Megan teaches yoga.” We often define each other by what we do – what we produce.

But what would it look like if we began to see and define each other for who they are instead of what they do?

Snow and ice have crippled the United Kingdom this week- the coldest recorded winter in thirty years. With temperatures rarely rising above freezing, I thought it would be appropriate to remember another snowy winter.

On January 6, 1850, a young man stumbled through a blizzard in Colcester, England. His name was Charles Spurgeon. Originally bound for a baptist church, Charles was forced to seek shelter in a Primitive Methodist church. It would turn out to be a life changing event.

Only a dozen people filled the pews. Most of them were snowed up, including the pastor. Suddenly a thin, uneducated shoemaker took to the pulpit.

“Our text is found in Isaiah 45:22,” he said, “‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. This is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool and yet he can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand pounds a year to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.”

Then the shoemaker looked directly at soaking wet Charles. “Young man, you look miserable! And you will always be miserable, unless you obey my text!”

Charles didn’t remember much else of the shoemaker’s sermon; he was too possessed with the one thought: “Look unto me.”

In his autobiography, he later reflects, “I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away.”

I think the lesson of this story is that you don’t have to be educated or talented or well-spoken to change a life. If God could use a stammering Moses or a stuttering shoemaker, what can he do with you?

All we need to change the world is a readiness to abandon everything for the sake of what’s really important. And if we do, there’s no telling who could be watching.

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