I’ve been fretting for the last few weeks about 2010.
Every year in December I take an inventory of the past year, and develop goals for the year ahead. Historically those goals have been relatively large, primarily focused on business or personal finances. And for the most part I’ve managed to hit them. I would argue that people who desire to do great things should simply set bigger goals for themselves. They’ll likely be surprised at how much they’re able to do.
But this year, three things have conspired to make the goal setting process unusually troublesome for me.
- The birth of Miles is of course the biggest factor – the last six weeks have been the best (and more tiring) of my life, and I fully anticipate that continuing into the next year. But infants can definitely put a cramp in your style, and when all that free time you used to be able to leverage completely evaporates, it makes it tough to think really big.
- Focusing on others has been an increasingly strong desire in the last few months. I don’t want to do things simply for myself like I usually do. I’d like to develop more of a heart for others.
- I’m learning that I desire the spotlight way too much. So much of my motivation is based on the desire for recognition – to do good work and (more importantly?) for people to know about it. Which, like many other things, might not be considered a bad thing to some people, but is something that I think needs remedying.
So perhaps for the first time, I’m actually finding myself writing goals that are smaller than the year previous. It might sound funny, but for years I’ve gravitated towards visible goals and shied away from things that are good and character building but ultimately small and hidden. And while there’s a place for the big and visible, maybe the small and hidden is where the really amazing stuff happens.
Small is the new big
Mother Theresa’s name gets thrown around so often (often with sarcasm or in jest) that it’s easy to overlook how unique her ideas were. Everyone knows she was a saint, but what most don’t realize is the manner in which she went about her ministry.
While most people are grasping for more power and visibility, she genuinely believed that the world is changed through the small and hidden. She regularly and consistently argued that the small things are where the action is.
There are no great things, only small things with great love.
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.
It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.
If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Just 70 cents a day
When I was growing up, my parents adopted one of those foster kids you see on television – you know, the whole “70 cents a day can save a life” kind of thing. His name is Oscar, and he lives in La Paz, Bolivia. Other than sending them a check every month, your responsibility consists of optionally writing your foster child a letter once a year. The child does the same.
I never gave much thought to it – I don’t think I ever read one of the letters growing up. I did, however, make many jokes about how Sally Struthers was hoarding all this cash and eating caviar on her yacht off the Bolivian coast. I wasn’t even thoughtful enough to see whether or not Bolivia even had a coast.
Last year when I was home for the holidays, they received a letter from him with a photo, and I read it. It literally made me cry. Now a teenager, this boy’s entire life was changed because of my parents. He was able to go to school. He was able to afford clothing. He was able to eat healthy food. He was hoping to become a doctor. He was happy, healthy and excited about the future. And he loved my parents. He couldn’t stop talking about what a gift it was that these random people in America decided to sponsor him.
It was a small thing, writing a check for 20 bucks a month. But it transformed a life.
Small can change the world
If I’m honest, I think the reason I haven’t pursued doing “small things with great love” is that I’ve thought it was beneath me somehow. I’ve waited for years for some big, magnanimous, and public idea that I could do to “give back.” And while there’s nothing wrong with big things, my motivations have been much more about myself than about the cause.
Doing small things is hard, maybe even harder than big things. You don’t get the high of having a bunch of people congratulate you. In some cases, not a single person even knows what you’ve done. It requires humility, selflessness, patience and self-discipline. And there’s no big reward at the end of it. At least not an obvious one.
The Bible talks a lot about a concept of “The Kingdom of God”, and a common misconception is that it’s some vague thing that happens when you die. But in reality, the “Kingdom of God” is here, now. It’s about bringing God’s love here to earth, and that’s done primarily through small acts done with great love. Caring for the people who are ignored. Helping a neighbor who’s lost their job. Giving your extra coat to someone who needs it, a hot meal to someone who’s hungry. Loving everyone – even the people who others would consider “unlovable”. And doing so not because of what you get out of it, but because you want to create the kind of world that God wants, where people with the freedom to choose willingly decide to love each other more than themselves.
I’ve desired the big and showy for years, but this year I’m hoping I can think smaller.
