A wonderful devotional from Breakfast with God, sent by Lisa! Thanks! This is really so encouraging!
A tour group passed through a particular room in a factory. They viewed an elongated bar of steel, which weighed five hundred pounds, suspended vertically by a chain. Near it, an average-size cork was suspended by a silk thread.
"You will see something shortly which is seemingly impossible," said an attendant to the group of sightseers. "This cork is going to set this steel bar in motion!"
She took the cork in her hand, pulled it only slightly to the side of its original position, and released it. The cork swung gently against the steel bar, which remained motionless.
For ten minutes the cork, with pendulum-like regularity, struck the iron bar. Finally, the bar vibrated slightly. By the time the tour group passed through the room an hour later, the great bar was swinging like the pendulum of a clock!
Many of us feel we are not exerting a feather's weight of influence upon others or making a dent in the bastions of evil in the world. Not so! Sometimes we don't realize how powerful the cumulative influence of God's goodness which we walk in is to those around us.
Not everyone is called to spread the love of Jesus through the pulpit, on the evangelistic trail, or in a full-time counseling ministry. Most of us are called to live our lives as "corks," through word and example- quietly, gently tapping away through the work of our daily lives. Tap by loving tap, in God's time, even the quietest Christian can make a huge difference in the lives of those whom preachers may never reach.
One modern-day philosopher has estimated that the average person encounters at least twenty different people in the course of a day, with a minimum of eye contact and exchange of words or gesture. That's at least twenty opportunities for a cork to "tap" at the collective human heart.
As you go about your day, remember that even a smile can warm a stranger's heart and draw them to Jesus.
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