My wife and I live in a Retirement Community. Because of vulnerability to Covid-19 we are almost in a lock-down situation. After more than three months it really got to me. I felt locked in. Then came all the social unrest, massive crowds, Black Lives Matter and looting of property - day after day after day. I watched it all and got depressed. “All this is going on and I am not making the slightest bit of difference for anyone! What’s the point of living!”
The phone rang. It was Shamayel Ameri, a Muslim woman here from Afghanistan. She fled from the Taliban because she was next on their “kill list”. She thanked me for what I have been doing for her for six years. Her call reassured me. Sometimes the call to make a difference is to simply make a difference in one person’s life.
That is my call today. Find one person. Learn from and influence that one person. Have that person be someone of a skin color, ethnicity or sexual orientation other than yours. Get to know that person. Be a friend and mentor. Listen. Learn. Eat at each other’s home.
My life has been enriched by just such relationships with a Chinese descendent of Confucius, the lone female Lutheran school principal in an LCMS District with 117 schools, a gay family member, a black principal of a Lutheran school. Each made a difference in my life and just maybe I made a difference in theirs.
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