What's your stance on hand soap? I realize that in our political moment, hand soap hasn't gotten the exposure it should. But seriously, how much do you value hand soap? Think this is a silly question or some rhetorical turn? Nope. I just encountered someone for whom soap was the beginning and end of importance.
I'm attending a conference in New York called Q (see a picture here). It's a gathering of thought leaders and culture influencers thinking about the next fifty years of life in America and elsewhere, dreaming about and devising strategies to insert a theme redemption centered on Jesus during the coming decades. And nothing is out of bounds for that redemption. Including hand soap.
Among the powerhouse list of presenters--leading genome scientists, artists, pastors, teachers, executives--a humble visitor from Zambia showed me the importance of the little things. Lister (lee-ster), a Zambian, shared about a nationwide ministry she leads that gives everyday care for sufferers of HIV/AIDS. But it has been difficult for her and others to give real care because of a dire shortage of the tangible materials to do it with. Struggling with her English, she told a simple story of one of her patients and her primary role of bathing this woman. Video footage overlaid her brief talk showing a bone-skinny arm and a soapy cloth running over it. A hollow face becoming a clean. Lister's "pitch" at the end of this story was a plea for support, for soap.
It would be easy to bound in her story and think, I need to get more serious about supporting people in need of something as readily available as soap. But something broader occurred to me. During her brief moment to share and express thanks, I realized was in a room of people singularly focused on the thing God had called them to do. Singularly focused. Eerily focused. Powerfully focused.
For Lister, the fruit of her passion was a clean woman. The genome scientist's passion, a body of Christians convinced that faith and science can be charitable neighbors. The advocate for federal legislature to reverse global warming, the largest peaceful act of activism to raise awareness for reduced carbon emissions.
Q has erected a mirror in front of me. Faced with that mirror I ask, what is the fruit of my passion? It would be easy in this forum to siphon everyone's passion and make it temporarily mine, a flash in the pan. A harder route, though, is seeking in God's wisdom in finding the passions he would have me pursue because he's uniquely gifted me to do so. Closely coupled with that challenge is the Spirit-generated belief that God intends for those expressions, those fruits, to exist if I would risk to find them in faith with joy.
So my question to me, and by extension you, is: what is your passion's fruit?
1 comment:
That is a very complicated question, made so by the blunt fact that God calls us to many things. We are spouses, children, parents, employees, coworkers, friends, parishioners, evangelists, witnesses, citizens, and many other things. I tend to plot them out along concentric circles, beginning with worship, and then one's responsibility to immediate family, then parents, and so on. Paul seems to be doing something like this in Galatians when he reminds the church to do good to all . . . and especially to those of the household of faith. At any rate, your question is geared toward labor: what is the holy fruit of what you do? And I believe that my goal, as an editor at a certain place in Christian publishing, is to preach the gospel by finding, polishing, and presenting the best possible examples of Christian witness and activity I possibly can before the eyes of the world. There are certainly a lot of elements underneath that, as you well know, but I believe that is my soap at this moment, God willing.
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