The Value of One: Why You Don’t Have to Save the World
There’s plenty of hurt in the world today, and it’s hard to imagine eradicating it all.
In 2016, over 500,000 people in the US were recorded as homeless. Over 1/5 of those were children.
More than 300 million people in the world suffer depression.
In 2015, 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty.
With such overwhelming need in the world, it’s easy to think:
- “How can we possibly fix it all?”
- “Does what little good I do even make a dent in all this need?”
- “I can’t make a big enough difference in the world- it’s hopeless.”
And it can seem hopeless. It can seem like we shouldn’t even try, because there’s no way we can make all this heartache go away.
That is, until we realize that God never told us to fix it all. He never placed the burden of solving all of humanity’s problems on any one human being’s shoulders. No one person or organization can eradicate poverty or rescue the world from depression. When we expect more of ourselves than God does, we set ourselves up for failure.