Seeing Individuals in the Blur of Life

The Rubik's Cube has been around since I was a boy – which is quite a shocking statement at this point in my life – and it is the rage where my 12 year old grandson lives in Asia. His parents, who serve with us, recently sent me a video showing him solve the puzzle in under a minute.

My grandson Jonathan's achievement was thought-provoking (e.g., how many 45 seconds would I need to do this?), but what impressed me was an analogy I saw between his performance, with the clock ticking beside him, and our feeling about ministry growth at TeachBeyond. As time went on, Jonathan just twisted faster and the movements became a seeming random blur.

Sometimes that is how it feels as more and more activities spring up and existing work grows, matures, or undergoes a metamorphosis. Support staff in our offices are in a kind of hyper-drive keeping up with the dynamic growth. People are joining, new schools opening, new training programs emerging, and new and greater “problems, opportunities, and challenges” are arising. We can definitely identify with the blur stage of the Rubik's Cube video, but amazingly, chaos isn’t the result. In short, it’s fantastic. Beautiful order is emerging and, because of God’s grace, our capacity to handle growth and change is increasingly more than equal to the occasion. We have always said, “There is not a lot happening if we know everything that’s going on” – and we certainly long ago lost track of “everything that is going on.”

Many reading this are active agents of transformational activity: you are the ones God is using to bring change that originates in the heart and expresses itself in all domains of life. One leader wrote today to say that the blur of activity can leave people on the sideline. In her case, she has served faithfully and her responsibilities have grown dramatically. But, as she noted, in caring for others there is a need for personal care. It’s a sobering truth. Our service begins with each other no matter how strong and independent our colleagues appear to be. Our love for others begins with love for the individuals in our lives, not simply or primarily for the nameless masses.

For many of you the new academic year recently began. Let’s rejoice in the things God is doing – things we see with our eyes or by faith (don’t forget to see with both) – but let’s not be so engrossed in the blur of “doing” work for God, that we don’t see the needs of individuals in our sphere of influence. In a real sense, each is entrusted to our care.