Thursday, June 4, 2015

The Dripping Faucet

It's so easy to get caught up in what's wrong with the world. The gossip style headlines grab us..."Do you believe..." "Horrible outcome for...." "Another Tragedy...". Then we start looking for good stories and find "Elk saves life..." "Gorilla saves child..." We jump around from one end of the spectrum to the other. The extreme stories on either end get moved to the top of the list.
Perhaps that's not such a bad thing because daily reality is falling somewhere in the middle. Often, saving a life is not a dramatic one time event. And mostly ruining a life is not a single event either. How do you write about a dripping faucet when the world is watching for the next flood? Most of life is a dripping faucet.
The important thing is that those big headline stories, good or bad, are exceptions. We shouldn't get too caught up in them. We need to seek pleasure in incremental changes for the better. And perhaps that's what faith is all about - knowing that even the smallest positive things we do contribute to a greater shift toward something bigger and better. Perhaps a Gorilla cares about a human child in danger - saves that one life - because dozens of people, for dozens of years were kind to the Gorilla. It wasn't just the Gorilla that saved the child, it was the dripping faucet of kindness.

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