What Does It Take?

Perhaps a better question is what are you willing to do for the sake of another? Or, for the sake of a dream? To what ends will you travel, what mountains will you climb? What humiliations will you endure?

I have seen a general reticence in people around me to take the more difficult road. Perhaps it's our current culture or a perceived climate of hopelessness in the face of an unyielding economy and unrelenting troubles. Young people, in particular, seem daunted by the boulders in their paths. Instead of climbing over them or figuring out a way to get around them, they turn around and try another route. It seems easier.

But every once in awhile, a person emerges who appears fearless and undaunted. The dream is so alive in that person's vision that it bubbles over onto other people.

Martin Luther King, Jr. infected his peers with his confidence that change could and would come. He had a dream and we are all living it today, to one degree or another.

For good or ill, Steve Jobs was such a man, incessantly driving himself and others to greater things, filling up and expanding on his imagination with the teams he created.

Or Gandhi or Mother Teresa or Abraham Lincoln or perhaps there's an individual in your immediate world who comes to mind, not a national treasure, just someone committed to the bettering of the lives of others.

Jesus was such a person, willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of humankind. The wonder of Jesus is that he was willing to live out the paradoxes he claimed would lead to individual and global fulfillment: giving to receive, loving enemies, walking the extra mile, giving away the coat, turning the other cheeks, practicing humility, sacrificing today for a better tomorrow, and seeking out the one who needed to be found.

In Matthew 18:12-14, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep saying, "What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish."

It's a lot of trouble to leave the 99 for the one. That one is probably rebellious or careless, perhaps that one is confused or perhaps, so lost that he/she has lost a sense of self, self-medicating with drugs, alcohol or violent behaviors. It is not easy to find the lost because the one doing the looking has to take some risks, go into places he/she may not be used to going, using untried methods to capture the attention of that one. It's all outside the comfort zone.

Going after the "one" is not for everybody.

is led by a vision for seeking out the one. As a result, it can seem like a roller coaster ride, trying things, moving quickly, changing gears, creating atmosphere, breaking molds, inviting the "one" to come in every day or better yet, going out to look, to discover the one still hiding out there.

It's all happening pretty fast for me too. But I trust the motives of this motley crew. And for this reason, I'm learning just a little more about what it means to open my arms wide and expose my heart. I still remember the time when I was "the one." That's another story for another day.

Irmgarde Brown
Blogger, Writer, Librarian,
Follower of Christ
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