Day 23 Because you're worth it

Im very blessed.  Im quite talented at quite a few things and always have been.  Im musical (piano guitar. sing. write)  Im good with words - poetry and prose. I am reasonably handy with a tool kit.  I can teach and get on well with people of all ages.  I learn languages relatively easily.   Latterly Ive discovered I can paint and Im creative in lots of other ways as well.  Ive had a good, all round education and I can hold my own in a quiz.   Im definitely blessed.

But theres a bit of a downside to all of that.   And it is that for a lot of my life I felt that I was Jack of all trades and master of none.  I did all of the above adequately, but none of it excellently.   And if I did have potential to excel at something I didnt have the wherewithal to step out and make something great happen.  This used to bother me alot.  And then I bumped into Ian White at a conference.

Ian White ( many of you will remember) was a singer songwriter back in the day who wrote several albums setting the psalms to music.  He did other stuff as well but the Psalms albums are probably what he is best known for.   He started his career in Scotland when I was there studying and he often visited the church I was a part of in Dundee.   He ran songwriting workshops which I attended.  Id often jump in a car with student pals to go and hear him wherever he was playing in our vicinity.  His music was pretty much unadulterated scripture set to music.  Through Ian White I learned lots of the psalms by heart. 

After I left Scotland I forgot about him for a few years until I noticed he was playing in England somewhere near where I was at the time.  So once again I jumped in a car and went to see him.  I think at that point I went up to speak to him at the end and told him I was a long time follower from way back when he was starting out.

Fast forward many years.  I was at a festival and lo and behold Ian was on the worship team.   I walked past him in a hallway and as I did I had a picture of him digging foundations.  He was all on his own with a spade, standing in a trench digging.   It looked hard work and lonely.  But as I watched the 'camera' drew back and I began to see that these foundations werent just for a wall, or even a house.  They were for a massive building.  Absolutely enormous.    I stopped Ian and I told him the picture and said that I wanted to thank him  because what he had done over the 20 plus years had laid foundations for what God wanted to do in worship in the future.  He was very moved.  He said he sometimes doubted he had made much of an impact at all.  I told him thats not how God saw it.  His faithful perseverance over years, doing what God told him to do not only brought joy to a generation of young worshippers in Scotland, but achieved something much greater in spiritual places.

You wont believe this. but as I am writing this Facebook has just pinged. One of the very few Facebook friends Ive never met is replying to a comment I left on his post.  He is an pastor and an author and has a brilliant way with words.  His post today was so  beautifully written that I commented , tongue in cheek, that he should write a book ( He's written loads)   He replied - but it was you who told me I should write a book in the first place.    Did I??  I have no recollection.   But I probably did.  Its the sort of thing I say to people.  Another friend of mine Dale Neal is someone else I told needed to publish.  He did.  He is now a really acclaimed children's poet.    Yet for all my writing, for all my poems, for all my singing and songwriting over the years I seem to have got nowhere at all much.😀

And then I think about Ian - he felt the same.  But God saw things differently.   And I have to believe - and you have to believe too - that our contribution to this world is actually truly extraordinary.  There are people alive today because a conversation with us changed the trajectory of their life..  We might never know it.  There are people , more than you think, who are so glad that we are their friends.  There are churches who have benefited much from our presence and our prayers and our chat and our laughter.  There are letters and journals and diaries which nobody might ever have seen but which in 100 years time might bring hope and inspiration and smiles to our great grandchildren. Every day, everywhere we go, we carry light.  We sow seeds. We dig foundations.  We might not realise it and sometimes we may feel that we arent really contributing much at all.  But someone somewhere is going to reap the harvest, build the building, stand on our shoulders and go higher and further because we gave them a boost.   Be encouraged.  You matter. 


PS please dont comment that I am wonderful and life changing and all that jazz.  I know.  I really do. Just have a think about how wonderful YOU are !😊


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