The clamshell by Max Lucado:
“May I show you my new clamshell? It just arrived. My old one was thinning out, so I bought a new one. Special ordered. Tailor-made. Top-of-the-line. I can stand up in it. Sleep in it if I want to. Go ahead and take a look inside if you want. As if the shell’s insulation wasn’t enough, I can turn up the music and tune out the world. All I do is step in, grab the handle and pull it closed. Better than body armor, thick as an army tank. I don’t know what I’d do without mine. When news reports describe Afghan refugees, into the shell, I go. When a homeless person appears with a cardboard sign, I just close the lid. When missionaries describe multitudes of lost, lonely souls, I climb in. Why, just last week, someone told me about regions of the world that have no clean water. Without my clamshell to protect me, who knows what I would have done. I might have written a check!”
As I was reading this excerpt by Lucado, I started to think of the endless times I’ve stepped into my clamshell and said, “I don’t even know where to start?” or “this problem is too large, I can’t change it by myself.” The more I thought about this concept, the more I realized we don’t intend on clamming up; we don’t mean to hide from the pain, the hurt, and the suffering of this world. We just don’t know what to do or how to do it. We want to help, we want to make a difference, but we look at the world’s problems and realize they are too vast and intense, sometimes even complicated. I can’t fix world hunger, but I can feed or even serve the homeless within my community. I can’t save all the orphans, but I can love on the children in my neighborhood and provide them with a safe shelter if they ever need it. I can’t heal the sick, but I can reach out to my church or even nearby hospitals and offer my help.
We don’t have to fix the world on our own. No one can. That’s a heavy burden to carry. But we can work small within our community and be an example to those around us so that they can do the same.
