Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] What's up, you guys? Greetings from yet another hotel room before an event.
[00:00:03] This time, the hotel room is in Albuquerque.
[00:00:08] It's really exciting, isn't it?
[00:00:12] Jesus said these words, Listen carefully.
[00:00:14] You are the salt of the earth. And he said, you are the light of the world. I think sometimes we hear that and think, okay, Jesus, I love you. I get that you love me and believe in me, but I don't believe you when you say those words.
[00:00:30] I wrote a daily anchor this week, and I actually read my own daily anchor, which might strike you as kind of weird, but it's one of the only things I do that I regularly read with my morning coffee while I'm praying. Because, well, I write those based on what God is saying to me. I have nothing to say unless he speaks to me. So I'm kind of reviewing what he's been saying to my heart so I could be true to it. But I read this one line in my daily anchor the other day, like, you're a world changer. And it goes along with, you're the salt of the earth, light of the world. And I kind of cringed when I read my own words because I was thinking of the mom whose goal isn't, I'm gonna change the world. I'm thinking of the mom who's maybe reading that and thinking, my goal, like, my bar is set at keep the kids alive today.
[00:01:14] And if I've done that, it's a successful day.
[00:01:19] And so likewise, you hear, like, you're the light of the world. And you think, lord, I don't know if you can relate with me, like, I'm the light of my living room on a good day.
[00:01:30] And that's about as far as it's getting. So when we hear those words, if we don't understand the Lord correctly and what he actually means, I'm going to get to that in a minute.
[00:01:39] It could be deflating. It could be like, well, God's setting the bar up here. And you know what? I'm never going to live up to that bar. And I see, like, the impact maybe I could be having in the dream of God. And I just know it's just not going to happen that way.
[00:01:53] All right, here's where I think we're misunderstanding our Lord.
[00:01:58] When we are the light of the living room, or whatever room we're in, we are being the light of the world in the grand scheme, the grand plan of God. Because every single small thing that you do to be a light right where you are in his grand interconnected Plan. You are actually. Even though you can't see it. Yes. The mom loving her kid and changing the diaper in the living room right there. You're actually changing the world.
[00:02:25] Don't believe me? Let's look at the Gospels, guys.
[00:02:28] The Gospels are not filled with stories where Jesus is doing something that is overtly targeting and changing the world or where there's massive crowds. If anyone deserved a massive crowd, it's Jesus.
[00:02:44] But we have this way of gauging the importance of things based on external appearances.
[00:02:50] I gotta tell you, one of the biggest events I've ever spoken at, I was at the National Eucharistic Congress. It filled the largest stadium in the United states.
[00:02:59] There's like 60,000 people there. And before I went on stage, they're like, yeah, there's 2 million people live streaming.
[00:03:05] Like, I wish you hadn't said that.
[00:03:09] I had a second where I got out on the stage and I held my cross. I'm like, these are my notes. And I put that on the podium and I kind of froze for a second and I had all these thoughts like, this is not good. You need to not freeze right now.
[00:03:22] But the reality is, guys, Jesus never, during his earthly life, never looked out at a stage that was that big or an audience that was that large.
[00:03:34] Am I more of a world changer than him? St. Paul never spoke to 2 million people live streaming. He never did. Am I to believe that because of my worldly criteria, I'm more of a quote influencer than Paul? Guys, we really get it all wrong. You see the impact that Jesus Christ had as the Word made flesh, the impact many of the saints had who were, who were doing things that were far smaller by second. The criteria, the impact that had wasn't quite as broad as we can have today, but it was so deep that fast forward 2000 years and people are filling arenas talking about what they said 2,000 years ago and what they did in their lives was be faithful to the small encounters right in front of them. Most of the stories in the New Testament are, quote, small scale preaching.
[00:04:32] There Jesus interacting not with massive crowds. There's times where he fed the 5,000, not including women and children. There's great miracles. There's a couple instances where there's great huge crowds.
[00:04:42] Most of the time it's intimate groups. It's Gospel of John. It's one encounter after another with one person at a time. And that's how the New Testament church continued. And I love thinking of St. Paul. And Cardinal Ratzinger wrote this so Beautifully on the new evangelization. And you got to Google Cardinal Ratzinger, New Evangelization. It'll blow your mind. It's beautiful reflection on what actually changes the world, what makes someone a light of the world. And he wrote that Paul, at the end of his life, believed that he had proclaimed the gospel to the very ends of the earth. But the Christians were small communities dispersed throughout the world, insignificant according to the secular criteria.
[00:05:25] In reality, they were the leaven that penetrates the meal from within. And they carried within themselves the future of the world. Paul was faithful to speaking to lots of small groups, but he had the excitement see what he was doing, was pregnant with the purpose of God. That he knew that while what I'm doing seems small, I am in fact changing the world. Because what I'm doing is one piece of a master plan that I won't even see built up in my lifetime that I couldn't possibly conceive of with my small mind.
[00:06:00] And when we don't think that way, guys, you know what happens?
[00:06:04] We think so big that we miss what God's calling us to do right under our noses.
[00:06:08] There's a great saying that the more you focus outside your sphere of influence, the less power you actually have left inside your sphere of influence.
[00:06:17] We obsess with the global scene and what's going on in the world. And we watch the news and we feel like we're somehow engaged and connected to it all. And then we miss the fact that that our kid, who may have an impact on the world, or another person who impacts the world in ways we can never possibly imagine, is right in our nose needing our formation.
[00:06:33] But we're stressed out about global affairs that we can do nothing about. That's what the devil would rather have you spend all your time than being faithful to being a light to the world by being a light in your living room, by changing the world, by faithfully and joyously changing that diaper. But we miss it. We miss it if we think the wrong way about the things that matter. There's a beautiful story of Mother Teresa. She went to this world global summit, this global meeting with all these world leaders about how to end world hunger. And on her way in, she encountered a man who was outside the door, laying on the steps, dying because he didn't have food.
[00:07:12] And she was late for her talk.
[00:07:15] And she came in and explained why she was late. She said, here we are at a global summit to solve hunger.
[00:07:21] But I had to stop and help a man outside the door that everyone walked past because he was dying for want of a piece of bread.
[00:07:30] We miss the plan of God when we miss the one person and the infinite importance of each person that God found worth dying for. I thank God that Jen Taranowski didn't overlook the importance of being a light of the world right where he was. If you follow my ministry for a while, I'm sure you've heard me talk about Jan Taranowski. I'll tell you again, I just love this story, man, that here's a guy who. Who's living through all the turmoil in Poland while Nazis take over. Then. Then, you know, he lives in Krakow. He's right near Auschwitz. He lives with all these. All the horror of the 20th century.
[00:08:04] Then he experiences Nazis getting out, and then the war and the yay, we're free. Oh, and then we're handed off in the war. They lost twice to the communists who were then crushing Polish culture. What can I do? What can I possibly do?
[00:08:16] I'll tell you what. If Jan had been distracted, as so many of us are, by what's a big deal?
[00:08:23] What would he have done? He might not have paid attention to the people under his nose that needed ministering to. He might have started a podcast, or he might have lived under the delusion that if I don't have a viral video or I'm not speaking on a big stage, then what I'm doing doesn't really matter. No, no. He thought what I do here with the people right around me matters a lot. So he started a small group and invested his life in a handful of young men.
[00:08:49] And he taught them Marian devotion, a true devotion to Mary. And then he, you know, he formed them in Carmelite spirituality. And then one of those men, years after Jan Taranowski died, Jan didn't get to see this in his lifetime, but he sees it now. One of those men became Pope John Paul ii, who came home and completely obliterated the darkness that had been dominating Poland by the grace of Almighty God, by preaching the gospel there, and whose motto, as he's introduced to this true devotion to Mary by Jan, is totus tuis Maria.
[00:09:20] And. And this. The big flag of the Solidarity movement was Our Lady. That was toppling communism throughout Poland, that eventually toppled it throughout Eastern Europe. What if Jan thought, I can't make a difference?
[00:09:34] What I'm doing doesn't matter here that much because I'm not, quote, changing the world. Jesus said to be a light to the world. Well, I'm helpless here.
[00:09:43] I can't do anything. Nah, what you do matters infinitely when you are faithful to God right where you are.
[00:09:52] I love this.
[00:09:54] This is from William Ross Wallace's 1865 poem. He said, the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.
[00:10:04] Whatever you're doing, whoever God has sent you to love today, even if no one sees it, he does do it well. Now, when you do that, when we dare to dream small, when no mission, no mission is too big, no mission is too small for a Christian.
[00:10:21] Back to Ratzinger, he said, dare once again with the humility of the small grain, the small grain of wheat, the small mustard seed to leave up to God the when and the how it will grow. When you live with that, you live with a sense of purpose and mission that impregnates every single thing you do. And that makes life pretty dang exciting, to be totally honest with you. Because even though you can't see the full plan and how you're changing the world, how you're part of it all, you can know for sure that when you're becoming saint, insert your name here today that you are God bless your friend.
[00:10:56] And I want to thank you guys, people who were praying for me last week when I sent you my last Sunday reflection from a hotel room recovering from nasal surgery and just feeling like I was just spent. I got to tell you, man, like, I felt it. I really feel it when y' all pray for me, I really know it. And when y' all up the prayers for me, I just felt a wave of grace just whomp me and I'm very grateful and I love you guys.
