These days, it’s tempting to size your impact on the world by how many Twitter followers you have. Or unique hits to your blog. Or people in your pews. Or revenue targets achieved. Or whatever. It’s always been this way, I guess, though the metrics we use are always changing.
I believe we’re all hardwired pretty much the same way—to want recognition and praise, to be affirmed for the good work we’re doing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but too often, we make praise the point.
I think God operates in a totally different economy, one that’s not dependent on optimizing search engines, percentages, or any other feathers in our cap. Instead, I think God’s smile is the biggest when we are secretly incredible and when our leadership changes one life or a thousand lives without a lot of fanfare.
Don’t Miss
There was an old friend of mine, Don, who’s since gone home to be with God—he was secretly incredible. Don was a cell biologist who loved to climb mountains, sleep in the woods, and race cars. He was also wicked good at science and pioneered some new freeze-drying methods. He was a researcher at his day job but would work off hours to freeze dry all the foods he loved for his excursions into nature. What could be wrong with freeze-dried beef tenderloin while you’re dangling from one carabiner on a cliff face, right?
Secretly incredible Don loved good coffee. He couldn’t handle steeping packets of store-bought mix or the freeze-dried crystals your grandparents liked. So he worked his science magic on some really good coffee from a local coffeehouse near the pier in Seattle. After a few test runs on his freeze-dried home brew, he was soon taking this high-end stuff into the mountains and sharing it with his friends.
Word got out within a small circle of friends about this revolutionary stuff. Pretty soon, Don was making it for other hikers, enthusiasts, and whoever wanted to up their coffee game on the trail or the cliff face or wherever.
