Jeremiah 19

At the Willow Creek Summit there was a lecture on Jeremiah 19:10. If I got it right, Jeremiah doubted the impact he could have on non-believers by declaring his love of Christ.

10 Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching, 11 and say to them, 'This is what the LORD Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter's jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. 

 They then past out pieces of clay from "Jeremiah's Jar" and you were to write on it a promise to yourself. A promise to be better you. A promise to make the world a better place. I held the piece of clay for a good ten minutes as everyone wrote their promises on them. The piece of clay felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as I felt my stomach turn over and my eyes began to tear up. After hearing a speech from Mama Maggie Gobin and her selfless sacrifice for the children living in squalor in Cairo and having the piece of clay in my hand I began to feel... small... worthless. I felt as if I had wasted a lot of time in my life doing irrelevant and unimportant things.

I vowed to stop being afraid, to stop making excuses, to, in the words of Cory Booker, "do sumthin'!"

I wrote,

Become a bright light for children in the dark. Be an upstanding example of hope 

I took all the speeches, lessons, tips, advice and everything else from the leadership conference and decided I needed to do something. Like Dick Anderson, the Director of OrhanNetwork said to me last year in Nicaragua, "Put the serving towel over your arm and serve the children".

Tomorrow I fill out an application for Big Bros./ Big Sisters as well as Teach for America.