Speak to Me Sunday: Light Bulb Moments

In this complicated world we do what we can to create order. We organize, corral, and categorize in an effort to make sense of it all. And when things do get messy, what then?

We change a light bulb.

Last year Joe and I spent a Saturday morning volunteering with ReStart Augusta, a non-profit organization that provides bed frames, mattresses, and bedding to children, families, and veterans who don't have beds on which to sleep. Volunteer groups are divided into teams for assembling the frames, painting the frames, and then delivering the finished product. Joe and I were part of a team that delivered beds to the homes.

As the guys set up the bed frames at our first house visit, I glanced around. Every bedroom had piles of clothing in every corner because there was not a single bureau or dresser anywhere. In the family living area, the couch sagged and the window blinds were bent, or broken, or not there at all. And it was dark. The light bulb in the ceiling, which was the only light source, had gone out and something told me it had been like that for a while.

Later, as we drove away with the family waving goodbye from the doorway, I felt a little conflicted. Yes, we delivered beds, and it was a start, but all I could think was that I wanted to go back and change that light bulb.

In the weeks and months since that visit I have stood in the darkness of the broken light bulb and asked some hard questions. How does a single meal help world hunger? How do we put order and peace to poverty, ignorance, hate, disease? How do we stand in the face of overwhelming chaos and upheaval to scrape out a corner of peace? 

In the face of so much adversity it's easy to give up, to take a step back and think there is nothing, absolutely nothing that you can do that will change things. I also think it's all too easy to fall into the trap of setting up an all or nothing scenario. Of dismissing the little things. Of demanding that all social injustices--the world's socioeconomic problems, world peace, cancer--be fixed now, and then shake our fists at the heavens when it doesn't happen.

In other words, it's easy to think of the world on a grand scale and ignore the broken light bulb in front of you.

So where to start?

Right where you're standing, with one burning bush, one sick patient, and one child at a time; by offering a place to sleep, building a shelter, or advocating for a child.

Once, our son Nicholas, was waiting to get his phone fixed when an elderly black man entered the store asking for help. At first Nicholas assumed he was going to ask for money, but all the man needed was someone to jump his car battery. So Nicholas, having just received a brand new set of jumper cables this past Christmas, volunteered to help. Afterwards, the man grasped Nicholas' hand and said a prayer for him. When Nicholas told me the story, I could tell he was a little embarrassed because, in the grand scheme of things, he didn't feel like he had done anything special.

But sometimes the world falls away until there is just the person standing in front of you, and Nicholas had addressed the light bulb in that man's life.

God is so, so good. He knows our limitations, our fears, our hesitations. But he also sees our good intentions, and so he offers us pockets of grace to do his work.

In big, sweeping, grandiose ways.

But also in small ways.

After all, when you change a broken bulb a light shines in that little corner of the world.

On a Haiti mission

I couldn't change this infant's entire world, but in that moment, 

for that hour, I bathed and held her until the doctor could

see her. And I still pray for her to this day.