Most of us care. We really do. We care about our own lives, for sure, and also about the lives of those around us. We care about poverty and injustice, about orphans and the sick. We care about the folks who live and work alongside us and about what happens in their families, in their hearts, and in their heads. And yet, weighed down by everyday responsibilities – bringing home a paycheck, putting food on the table, shuttling kids around – we question our ability to make a difference. When we’re bombarded by the latest celebrity-help-the-world-athon, we shrug our shoulders in futility. Me? How? Faced with the seeming insignificance of what we have to offer, we don’t offer anything.
Maybe it’s because we think that in order for it to count, to make a difference that matters, we have to do something big, or everything we could do, or something no one else has done.
But that’s not true.
The Backstory
What can we do?
I came to ask this question one night while watching the NBC Nightly News anchored by Brian Williams. My kids were off doing their own things elsewhere. My husband was traveling. I was sitting on my couch with a stack of files from work by my side and my dinner in front of me on the ottoman. It was a normal night of multitasking: eating dinner, working and watching the news.
I heard Brian say something about a special report from Ann Curry of the TODAY show that was important enough to re-air in the evening. I looked up from my reading as Ann apologized for the pictures she was about to show – not exactly appropriate for the dinner hour. Then she launched into a tale of torture, describing the conditions of mentally handicapped adults in Serbia, who were kept in cribs their entire lives. Across the screen came pictures of grown men in the fetal position, sucking their thumbs and rocking back and forth in frozen contortions.
“Some of these men have never been released from their beds,” Ann commented.
How can this be? I found myself standing in the middle of my family room, hands raised in the air, howling. Then a sob erupted, and tears started down my face.
Now, I’m not a stranger to tragedy. I’ve sat at the bedsides of the elderly as they’ve loosened their grip on their dignity – and on life. I’ve preached in rescue missions and prisons. I’ve traveled to Central America, South America, and the Caribbean and have witnessed firsthand the poverty and deep needs of the people there. I’ve seen hard stuff before.
But something cracked me open that night, and like a foot jammed in the doorway, it wouldn’t let me close back down.
Do something.
A week later I saw another story of human tragedy on CBS’s 60 Minutes: hundreds of thousands of Congolese women who were victims of multiple rapes.
How can this be?
And then I heard the head of the International Justice Mission, speaking about sex trafficking, say that twenty-seven million people have been sold into forced prostitution.
What?
During these unsettling weeks, as I heard of these soul-troubling tragedies, I had been working my way through a book in which one particular story demanded my return day after day. It wasn’t a new tale. Actually, it was one I had read many, many, many times. But in this particular season it somehow grabbed on to my soul, squeezing it tight and wringing from it a reaction that required attention.
The Story
She saw him across the room and immediately sensed a familiar awareness in the very core of her being. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t “needy.” It was more like a primal pull, a “knowing and being known” kind of drawing. From within her arose a conviction that here she faced a defining moment, an opportunity to somehow be better than she’d ever imagined she could be.
The room was thick with aromas from the meal, smoke from the grilled lamb rising in tendrils toward the ceiling. Conversation buzzed about her, punctuated by laughter and accompanied by background music.
Clutching the present she had prepared, she wound her way through the group that had gathered around him, approaching with confidence but not without concern. When she reached him, he looked up at her and smiled. The crowd shifted to make room for her but then drew a collective breath as she presented the beautiful flask, a work of art in itself.
Without hesitation, she snapped the long neck off the vessel, and richly perfumed oil bubbled from the opening, dripping onto her hands. Then she raised the bottle and extravagantly tipped its contents fully on his hair. The fragrant potion oozed down his temples, his cheeks, and onto his neck. Lifting his gaze, he met her eyes and received her offering with gratitude.
A hollow silence, awkward and stiff, descended on the room. One of his inner circle of friends barked out an objection: “What a waste! Think how many hungry people could have been fed with what that cost!” His words gave permission to the other stunned observers so that murmurs of disapproval traveled through the room. Rejection and judgment rained down on her.
Again he met her eyes, understanding the meaning of her gesture better than anyone present. “She has done a beautiful thing. Yes, her gift was expensive, but the money that went for it would never have paid for the food needed for all the hungry in the world. She meant this as an offering uniquely for me, to prepare me for what I’m facing. She did what she could. And because she did what she could, what she did will be remembered as long as I am remembered.”
Everyone’s Story
Jesus said that because “she did what she could,” her actions would be remembered as long as he was remembered.
As I read and reread it, I began to see Jesus’ response to the woman in a way I hadn’t before. He had defended the woman’s action and pronounced that it would be paired with the Good News wherever it is preached throughout the world. It was so worthy, so descriptive of God’s love, that what she did would be permanently – eternally – attached to the Good News of God’s gracious care for humanity.
Where else in Scripture is such a statement made? What was this beautiful thing that Jesus paired with the gospel? What did she do?
She did what she could.
Whether it was related to the mentally handicapped adults in Serbia, the ravaged Congolese women, the children enslaved by sex traffickers, the AIDS orphans, the starving millions, or any other seemingly unfixable need before me, I had caught a glimpse of a life-changing concept in this story about a woman who did what she could. Then I discovered a fuller, broader, more challenging question than I had ever considered before.
What if?
She did what she could. What if I did what I could? And you did what you could? So that we did what we could? Not necessarily in the Congo or in Serbia, but right here, right now, wherever God has planted each of us – all of us?
Adapted from She Did What She Could: Five words of Jesus that will change your life by Elisa Morgan (Tyndale)
