This particular clipping is of a short survey of kids done back during the most recent presidential elections. It is titled: “What’s So Great About Being President?”
Would you just look at that! Over half of the kids decided that the best thing about being president would not be the ability to boss everyone around (surprisingly, that was next to last), or even having a plane all to their own. No, what kids agreed would be the coolest thing about being president is the ability to change the world.
Would somebody shout out “from the mouth of infants”!!! “Truly…unless you…become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 18:3)
Something inside me tells me that these kids have more of a handle on life than I do as a twenty-something. This has to be the one thing that every person was created to long for. This is the long lost desire that so many people have, but yet do not realize. It is a calling. It is buried deep within us to desire to make a difference. In that little slice of reality we call our world, we long to have an impact; leave our mark; make sure that when we’re dead and gone, someone will remember us by what we’ve left behind. “The world should be a better place because a man has lived”, as Little Lord Fauntleroy would put it.
(Slight change in topic, but bear with me here, it’ll come around!)
You say you want to go back to where it all began? you want to forget the openness? forget the love? forget the hurt? …go back to where you have a wall up that protects you from everyone else. Go back to what you were before...
Guess what?? I have news for you, you can’t go back. You can never go back to the way things were before. Try as you might, you never will be able to go back in time and remove the ‘damage’ you see in your life and the lives of others. Time marches on. The future is on it’s way to becoming today. It is a train, plummeting down the track to a destination you have no choice but to agree with.
You’d best make plans for that future. You’re fast becoming a part of it. You can run to the back of the train. But you can’t jump off. You can furiously try to regain a sense of the ignorance and protection you once had. But guess what it’s still in the future. It’s still just an attempt at recreating something that you now perceive that you once had.
You have to understand: I’m not trying to discount the pain you feel. I’m not trying to invalidate the hurt that comes from letting your castle wall be torn down. I’m simply trying to help you cope with it; deal with it; turn it around so that it propels you into the future as a better man; keep it from becoming a great gaping wound, the elephant in the room, as it were, that does nothing but bog you down and keep you in a vicious cycle of running from life. I want to help you face the world head on.
You say you want to put the wall back up that was there and kept you safe from the hurt that you now feel. I understand; believe me, I do.
But listen to me, please. You need to take this retreat you are talking about. You do need to consider what it is that’s going on inside of you. But instead of just trying to forget it all, bury it, and pretend like it doesn’t exist, how about you take it and meditate on it. I just read that “meditation [has a way of sending] us into our ordinary world with greater perspective and balance.” Perspective. Balance.
Meditate. Consider. Think about what it is that you are. What is it that drives you. What do you want to do?!?! These kids had it straight. ‘Changing the World’ is what they wanted to do. You too (whether you realize it or not) want to change the world. Your little corner of the world is what you want to change. You want to make a difference. You wanted to be God’s very gift that couldn’t be lived without. You wanted to change her world…
Now think: What about who you are are you happy with? What don’t you like? Is there something you’d like to see stay the same? something you’d like to see change?
Now make your plans. Change your own little world…starting in your own little piece of personal real estate. Build your wall, if you will. Maybe that will help you. But for goodness sake, don’t build it between you and yourself!!! Don’t ever lose sight of who you are, how you are, and who you will become. You do decide where you will end up. You can shape your future. But don’t lose sight of the future you are shaping by looking back to the past. It is behind you. It will never change. You can never undo the hurt.
What you can do is to look deep inside. Change your own world. One thought, one goal, one decision at a time.
Then look up, look out. And change the rest of the world. One word, one meeting, one person at a time.
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