Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [7]
In fact, what do they have? Humility? They jockeyed for cabinet positions. Sound theology? Peter told Jesus to forget the cross. Sensitivity? John wanted to torch the Gentiles. Loyalty? When Jesus needed prayers, they snoozed. When Jesus was arrested, they ran. Thanks to their cowardice, Christ had more enemies than friends at his execution.
Yet look at them six weeks later, crammed into the second floor of a Jerusalem house, abuzz as if they’d just won tickets to the World Cup Finals. High fives and wide eyes. Wondering what in the world Jesus had in mind with his final commission: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NIV).
You hillbillies will be my witnesses.
You uneducated and simple folk will be my witnesses.
You who once called me crazy, who shouted at me in the boat and doubted me in the Upper Room.
You temperamental, parochial net casters and tax collectors.
You will be my witnesses.
You will spearhead a movement that will explode like a just-opened fire hydrant out of Jerusalem and spill into the ends of the earth: into the streets of Paris, the districts of Rome, and the ports of Athens, Istanbul, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires. You will be a part of something so mighty, controversial, and head spinning that two millennia from now a middle-aged, redheaded author riding in the exit row of a flight from Boston to Dallas will type this question on his laptop:
Does Jesus still do it?
Does he still use simple folks like us to change the world? We suffer from such ordinariness. The fellow to my right snoozes with his mouth open. The gray-haired woman next to him wears earphones and bobs her head from side to side. (I think I hear Frank Sinatra.) They don’t wear halos or wings. And excluding the reflection off the man’s bald spot, they don’t emit any light.
Most of us don’t. We are Joe Pot Roast. Common folk. We sit in the bleachers, eat at diners, change diapers, and wear our favorite team’s ball cap. Fans don’t wave when we pass. Servants don’t scurry when we come home. Chauffeurs don’t drive our cars; butlers don’t open our doors or draw our baths. Doormen don’t greet us, and security doesn’t protect us. We, like the Jerusalem disciples, are regular folk.
Does God use the common Joe?
Edith would say yes.
Edith Hayes was a spry eighty-year-old with thinning white hair, a wiry five-foot frame, and an unquenchable compassion for South Florida’s cancer patients. I was fresh out of seminary in 1979 and sitting in an office of unpacked books when she walked in and introduced herself: “My name is Edith, and I help cancer patients.” She extended her hand. I offered a chair. She politely declined. “Too busy. You’ll see my team here at the church building every Tuesday morning. You’re welcome to come, but if you come, we’ll put you to work.”
Her team, I came to learn, included a hundred or so silver-haired women who occupied themselves with the unglamorous concern of sore seepage. They made cancer wounds their mission, stitching together truckloads of disposable pads each Tuesday, then delivering them to patients throughout the week.
Edith rented an alley apartment, lived on her late husband’s pension, wore glasses that magnified her pupils, and ducked applause like artillery fire. She would have fit in well with Peter and the gang.
So would Joe and Liz Page. Their battalion has a different objective—clothing for premature infants. They turn one of our church classrooms into a factory of volunteer seamstresses. The need for doll-sized wardrobes had never occurred to me. But then again, my children weren’t born weighing only three pounds. Joe and Liz make sure such kids have something to wear, even if they wear it to their own funerals.
Joe retired from military service. Liz once taught school. He has heart problems. She has foot deformities. But both have a fire in their hearts for the neediest of children.
As does Caleb. He’s nine years old. He plays basketball, avoids girls, and wants the kids of El Salvador to