It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Instant access to news from around the world is both a blessing and a curse. If you’re like me, you wonder sometimes what is real or true. The world seems to have suddenly changed into a crazy place with no solid ground to stand upon…or has it?
The key to finding solid ground first begins by looking at our own feet. Where are yours planted right now? Avoid the temptation to focus on the problems in Washington or a crisis on another continent. Not that these issues aren’t important, but direct your heart to those issues nearest to you instead: your family, your neighbors, your community, your workplace.
Yes, we do have a responsibility to exercise our right to elect folks that have the potential to change global issues. I hope everyone voted in the recent political races. However, our greatest impact for change is in the ordinary places we live and work. Open your eyes and ears. Opportunities to be a change maker are right in front of you.
I believe that every situation, no matter how ugly it may seem, has a glimmer of beauty within it. Therefore, finding that beauty offers hope and moves me forward in faith. In my own work, discouragement overcomes me easily. Leading my patients to better health and wellbeing seems an impossible goal some days. But then, joy interrupts my normal routine. Beauty crashes into my world.
Recently, a patient told me during a sick visit that she just completed her high school degree. This might not sound important until you realize that she was addicted to meth but is now sober for the past 3 years. What she thought impossible is now reality. The struggle is still very real but in that moment, we celebrated her amazing accomplishment together. Her next step is college to become an addiction counselor. Her story has the potential to change many lives. It’s exciting to watch her plan unfold.
In Shannan Martin’s most recent book, “The Ministry of Ordinary Places”, she concludes, ‘What I know now is that sometimes the best thing we can do for the world we’re in is to let our roots keep growing without regard to the climate around us. We sleep. We work. We bloom. We light up the world.’ Good advice and a call to action for those of us working to make our part of the world a better place.
Search no further for solid ground than the soil on which you are standing. Jesus places people all around you who shine His light of love, banishing the darkness. So join them and link your arms together. The stability created will surprise you. Build on the solid ground He provides. Then whatever craziness the world throws your way, you will not be shaken.
