Can one person really make a difference.
For me, the sheer amount of hurt and need in the world, our country, and especially our local
community can feel overwhelming. My heart is deeply stirred by the temporary and systemic
challenges all around us; hunger triggers a particularly visceral response. Faced by the
insurmountable struggles staring back at me, I find myself occasionally paralyzed with
indecision, uncertainty, inaction, caught up in the enormity of the problems and convinced little old me can’t fix a thing. For those of you who know how solutions-focused I am, you may
recognize the inability to conceive of and implement an answer to a problem is also a bit of an
existential challenge for me.
In the 1998 edition of A Chosen Faith, John Buehrens and Forrest Church describe this feeling
from an external perspective saying some may find the types of things individuals can
accomplish insufficient to the task of addressing systemic issues. Buehrens and Church counter that things like directly feeding the hungry, providing water to the thirsty, and clothing and shelter to the unclothed and unhoused, along with other types of direct, person to person, support form the foundation of what they call the “Pyramid of Religious Response.” Person to person generosity is of greater value than the individual occurrences. I can recall many times I was supported by others and the effect it had on me. I’m sure you can, too. Generous work, then, may be exponentially constructive or it may just fill a belly, but, sometimes, that’s enough and it’s always worth doing.
~Ian Van Sice
How powerful to realize that one small action can make such a difference. Thank you for sharing this
Your philosophy on generosity is right in alignment with the reflection you gave us last Sunday. What you presented last Sunday was more of a collective generosity that raised the bar for everyone. It put the implement in every ones’ reach and brought our better selves to work on our shared future. That was the broad scope. Your “Generous Work” essay takes the breadth of the collective and threads the needle of each of our desires to help humankind and opens the individual portal to implement generosity based on simple and direct giving, which has just as much affect on us individually as it does when we are part of a collective. Both close the gap in oppression and insecurity, both bring us to our better selves, both give us a church community that we can call home and share our humanity.
Thank you for this reminder that even small acts of generosity can make a difference in the world.