From Little Things...

After a conversation with someone over the weekend, I decided to write about this gem of wisdom that came out of Surrender: "Do little things with great love."

For a person like me - who gets very caught up in doing projects and running things and joining things (and incidentally, finds it hard to say no to people) - this is especially relevant. It's part of the reason why I burnout so much. I get far too caught up in trying to do big things that will change people's lives or my life or the church or the world, and then forget that the reason behind doing all those things is because I care about people, and do it for them.

A prime example is from the Africa Aid dinner last year. It was a big event, and in our very naive, new stage, we were thinking mainly about raising big money (for reference, it raised $2200 in a night). We invited a group of refugees from camps in Sudan to come along, and they sang for us, and it was my highlight of the evening. Their leader, Martha, spoke about how it didn't matter how much money we raised. How when they were in their refugee camps, and heard about some sort of money coming in, it wasn't much of a big deal because they knew that, for the most part, they wouldn't see that money anyway. Martha cried while she told us that what deeply touched them was that there were people like us - young and foreign and strangers - that cared about them and wanted to help them, even though they had nothing to give us in return. That's why I do Africa Aid. But sometimes, you get too caught up in meetings and paperwork and logistics and boring crap, and you forget about the heart behind it all.

To simply have a conversation with a lonely person is just as valuable as running an aid organisation. They are at very different positions on the scale of largeness, but possibly, sometimes, the former is higher on the scale of love - if you are like me and get bogged down in stress levels. Like the old adage says, "From little things, big things grow." Whatever you do with love and with care, plants a seed that can become something much larger. For instance, Amnesty International began with a British lawyer, Peter Benenson, who wrote articles and letters to his local newspaper on behalf of two Portuguese students, who had been imprisoned for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom. This relatively small act of selfless care gathered so much support and feedback, that a commitee was started to help gather and collect it all, and use it to help free the students. From that, one of the largest human rights organisations in the world came into existence.

It is so easy to show love, if we try. Unfortunately, it's probably easier to just not show anything at all. But I think everybody has some sort of dream for a change in the world. It might not be a very big change, or a very big dream, or a positive change, but people dream. But to change the world, you must first change your world - and that includes yourself, your family, your friends, your community. They all need love in some way or another. Might I be called idealistic, a dreamer, 'weak' for thinking like this? Yeh, probably. But I don't care, because I believe it. So for all of us, to do little things with great love, instead of the inverse of big things with loss of love, is something I find to be very valuable indeed.