Several weeks ago I talked about not listening to the drips in your life. Don't listen to the individual voices of criticism that come into your life and try to do damage. Instead, listen to the beautiful rain of all the other voices of encouragement and support in your life.
But today, I want to encourage you to be a drip. What I mean is this: I often hear people say something along the lines of, "I'd like to do something about (fill in the blank), but I'm only one person. What can one person do? What difference can one person make?"
I confess, I feel this way sometimes, myself. Every year, when we go to Mexico at Christmas to give out blankets and supplies to people in need, I am encouraged by the great sacrifice people make to send blankets and go on the trip. I feel good about the fact that we are making a difference. But, inevitably, at some point in the trip, I am overcome by the immensity of the task. For all the people we are able to help, there are still thousands who we are unable to help.
I get that way when I think about the enormous task of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. There are currently somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 billion people in the world who are in unreached people groups. An unreached people group (UPG) is a group of people who share the same language and culture and among whom there are less than 2 Christians for every hundred people. What that means is, for people in a UPG, there is a really good chance that they will live and die without ever even having heard about Jesus unless something changes to give them access to the gospel. With so many billions of people needing Christ, how can I, one person do anything to significantly impact the lostness of the world?
I was confronted with this feeling of being overwhelmed a couple of weeks ago when I learned about child slave trafficking related to chocolate production. I realized that I have responsibility for the purchases I make each day. I was talking to our youth about this and about our need to consider the purchases we make and how those purchases impact other people's lives. One of the kids was insistent that there is nothing we can do. We are not responsible for what happens to other people in other parts of the world and what difference would it really make whether I stopped buying chocolate or not.
But we can make a difference. One drip may not make that big a difference, but put a whole lot of drips together and they create floods that can move mountains, create rivers, generate electricity. Your single drip, when joined together with others can make a difference. Don't give up because you think your one voice cannot make a difference. Throughout the Bible, God's justice is pictured as a mighty water. We can be the rushing torrent of God's justice making a difference in the world.
On any given Sunday in America, there are more people attending church than attend all professional sporting events in a year's time. What would happen if that force were set free, turned loose for God? What would happen if we let "justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24)? We have the ability to change the world, if we let our drips join together to form a flood of compassion and love and mercy and justice and righteousness.
What we think we can do and the difference we can make is often through the lenses of our own abilities and our own inabilities. But that has nothing to do with what God can do when we yield our lives to him. God doesn't ask us to make the difference. He just asks us to place our lives in his hands, at his disposal, and see what he can do with them.
One of my favorite stories in the New Testament is the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. It's been a long day. Five thousand men plus women and children have been gathered listening to Jesus teach all day. They are beginning to get hungry, and the disciples come and point this out to Jesus (Like he didn't know!). So Jesus says, "You feed them!" Jesus knows he is about to do something miraculous. Jesus could have just conjured food out of thin air. But he doesn't. He tells the disciples to feed them. Why? Because he wants them involved. He wants the offering of their lives. He wants them passing the food out to the hungry and needy in the crowd. He is going to do the miracle, but they are going to be the channel through which it takes place.
The disciples say it can't be done. The task is just too big. How can they do anything to feed this many people? And yet...they come to Jesus with what they've got. "Jesus, here's a little boy with his spiderman lunch box, and he's got some sardines and a few crackers. Haha. But what good are they among so many? Haha."
So Jesus takes that little boy's lunch and with it he feeds the entire crowd so that there are twelve basketfuls of leftovers (one for each of the disciples?). The disciples offer up the little bit they can come up with, thinking it won't be near enough, and God does a miracle. One other thing I am always impressed by in this story. Jesus does something incredible, that no one there would ever forget, but one little boy had to offer up his lunch. He gave the little he had, and God did something unbelievable with it. He was a drip.
So, I encourage you to be a drip. Whatever it is that God is calling you to, whatever the big, massive, overwhelming task that he is asking you to take on that will change people's lives and impact the world and extend the kingdom, whatever the thing that seems so big that there is no way you can do it, do it! Take on the challenge! Offer up the little bit that you've got and just see what God can do with it.
