Conquering Goliath

Gandhi (never thought I'd ever start a blog post this way) once said, "Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it."

I watched a little flick called Remember Me last night while dog-sitting for a lady who has been working her tail off since April 27. The main character stated that line from Gandhi, and the emotions started rolling.

Ever since the storm hit I feel like I've been "frozen," in the words of my dear friend Kathryn. The past ten days have been up and down, up and down. I have been running in a thousand directions, doing a lot, but nothing that I felt was significant. The temptation is even there for me to list all the things I HAVE done in the past ten days, as if I have to prove something to whoever is reading this. I read the Twitter feeds of my friends who are repairing roofs or feeding the hungry or chopping up trees or taking care of the homeless. And I feel guilty. Very guilty. What have I done that is truly meaningful?

Remember a little dude named David. And remember "a champion named Goliath, who was over nine feet tall. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels." David, young and boyish as he may have been, was not the slightest bit afraid of that giant.

"Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. 'I cannot go in these,' he said to Saul, 'because I am not used to them.' So, he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

David said to the Philistine, 'You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied'..."

And, as we all know, David triumphed over Goliath with just a sling and a stone. No sword, no shield. Just a pebble.

What I have to offer my city right now may be mere pebbles, but one by one those pebbles are going to help tackle this monster of a mess created by that awful tornado. And combine my little efforts with your little efforts, combined with the people from DAPHNE who have been working here in RALPH... this giant is going to fall in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel.

So, whether you're throwing stones with a slingshot or wielding a chainsaw, whatever you do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will not be done in vain. And together, we can conquer Goliath.

Oh, and congratulations to the seniors of the University of Alabama whose college careers abruptly came to a hault, with a rather anticlimactic end. For a year, my classmates and I have been anxiously awaiting May 7 - the day we would wear our caps and gowns and march across the stage of Coleman Coliseum, grab our diplomas, and run!! What we all know is that our new graduation date - August 6 - is going to be the BEST commencement ever. We all have so much to be thankful for, so much to look forward to, and so much to give to our communities in the meantime.