Go Big or go Home

It is difficult for me to come off of an inspiring weekend.

Monday rolls around and it seems as if everything I had learned and felt over the weekend gets crushed by the responsibilities of the week. This past weekend I got a chance to go to a leadership conference and hear Bob Goff speak. I also had a chance to worship with student leaders from all over California to celebrate the work we get to do in the coming year for God on our campuses. With emotions running high I was completely exhausted but felt completely blessed.

Then the dreaded beginning of the week rolls around and I realize that I have to focus to finish my work and my homework. I have to get to classes, run errands, and do x, y, and z before I’m allowed to rest. All of the inspiration I felt over the weekend is sucked right out of me as I fall back into my old patterns of living. Oftentimes I feel like a failure. I lost all that potential, all that energy, and now I’m stuck doing the day-to-day stuff that seems so insignificant.

After all, I’m not out saving kids in third world countries. I’m not able to fly around the world to meet dignitaries and work with them to change the world. I’m just a 21-year-old American college student with very little money to her name and no famous connections to carry my ministry across the world. While Bob Goff spoke about all of the grand, amazing things he is able to do because of the resources he has and the connections he’s made, I stepped away from it all feeling insignificant and thinking one thing:

I’ll never do anything as amazing as that.

What a big bunch of bull I have allowed myself to succumb to. I think in looking at Bob Goff’s message from the direction of, “I will never be that successful” I miss the point he was making. He doesn’t want us to do what he is doing. That is not the point of his insane stories or his exciting life. The point he was making, I believe, was to do what is true to us as believers. We don’t have to roam around the world promoting social justice. We don’t have to become an honorary member of the Uganda Consul. What we as Christians, as people, have to do is make the most of what we do have.

Where we are in any moment is our mission field. I forget that so often and get caught up in the “go big or go home” philosophy that I end up missing the opportunities right in front of my face. My mission field is the Starbucks I get my morning coffee at. My mission field is the school I attend. My mission field in the neighborhood I live in. My mission field is my roommate, my friends, strangers I pass on the street, and even my church. When I start small by reaching out to the people around me, the world starts to change.

Save one life and you save the world entire.

So my goal is to stop focusing on everything I’m not, everything I don’t have, and everything I cannot do. Instead, I’m going to focus on what I am able to do and go from there. Baby steps.