Over the course of a given week, it seems there are a lot of things that happen that can give us additional anxiety. Beyond the day-to-day stresses, there are also the big picture stresses that happen in our nation and world that we seem to have more and more access to every year. While over time many of us have adapted to endure the large national stresses – so long as we don’t anticipate them directly affecting us, our daily stresses eventually can take a toll, and it seems eventually it’s not the big things that cause us to begin to fall apart. Instead it is the one additional stress on our lives – that one small thing we didn’t anticipate. It is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.
This past Sunday, during Faith in Motion, I asked the gathered assembly, “what would be one thing that could change the world for the better if more people did it?” There were a number of well thought out responses to this question, ranging from the straightforward plea for common sense to become more common, the responsible call for people to care for creation by picking up their own trash and any litter they’d encounter to help save the planet and the more complex and challenging invitation for people to listen more and respond with patience instead of reacting out of fear or anger when others provoke you.
All of these things are worthy in their own ways, and our world would definitely be blessed if more people were to work on these things. But to accomplish all the wonderful ideas that we have is simply too much for one of us to do alone. At the same time, I wonder if there is an opposite version of the straw that breaks the camel’s back. What does it look like to pile up good thing after good thing in our world?
This past month in Preschool Chapel, Deacon Connie shared with our students a small bucket filled with small colored pom poms. She called it a “joy bucket,” and she showed the kids how we have the ability to fill people’s buckets with joy, or perhaps remove some of that joy from their buckets. Our world isn’t much different. We have the ability to help fill the buckets of others with good things and with negative things. And the good news is it’s not up to us to fill the entire bucket of someone else all at once.
So I’m wondering what it looks like for us to be people who try to do one small simple thing in our world to fill the buckets of others with goodness? What is one thing that you can do every day that might make a small positive impact on someone else whose current capacity of goodness or struggle in their lives you may not know? Family of God, as we enter into a stressful season in our world, know that each of you can make a difference in the lives of your neighbors. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It can be just one small thing. Because just like our preschoolers’ buckets of joy, small things add up. And enough small things offered by enough people can truly make joy and goodness overflow.
Pastor Chris