The enormity of life

It's so easy sometimes to get used to our settings and environment that we forget just how big this place is. Every now and again I get caught up in thinking about the scope of life and humanity at this stage in history, and how it's so easy to become absorbed in one's self, circumstances and relationships that the outside world disappears with exception to what we see on the nightly news.

According to a recent estimate, the world population is currently sitting around 6,600,000,000.
The population of the United States is estimated around 300,000,000.
The population of the state of Virginia is estimated around 8,000,000.
The region which I live in is estimated to hold about 240,000 persons.
The city which I live in is estimated at around 69,000 residents.

It's easy for numbers to lose their meaning when they are tossed around in nearly any context. When I think about the sheer mass of people just living in my city, yet alone compared to the world population, it is hard to fathom. My life seems so overwhelmingly complex sometimes, and the hardships that my friends and family are going through is hard to cope with at times. It's easy for me to forget that there are 68,999 other people in the city I live in that are dealing with their own problems and challenges as well. And 6,599,999,999 people on the face of this planet facing innumerable obstacles each and every day.

How amazingly complex this place is. I get lost in imagination just thinking about it. If Newton's law can be applied to our life circumstances and not just physics (which I think it can), my mind pictures about 100,000,000,000,000,000 ping pong balls constantly bouncing off of each other at a deafening rate, representing the problems that each of us face daily.

It's easy to get caught up in ourselves and forget the world around us. It's also just as easy to forget that in the midst of doing our jobs, supporting a family, paying the bills, and keeping up with our relationships and hobbies, that we have been called to a greater purpose. God intended us to relate and commune with him and all the wonderful and weird people that we share this place with, in order to make Christ-followers out of ourselves and others. It is estimated that 2,178,000,000 people on this planet are adherents to the Christian faith (33%). This means that about 4,422,000,000 are tenets of Islam, atheism, Hinduism, African religions, Chinese religions, Buddhism, Judaism, and various other belief systems. While that number is staggering, the simple math of one Christian reaching one unbeliever reverses the minority to the majority. And, if by some radical occurrence, each Christian reached 2 unbelieving persons, then a Christian utopia would exist here on earth (or something like that).


So with some much to be done, and seemingly so few doing anything, can one person really make a difference? Compared to the scope of the challenge, it would seem the answer is a deafening no. If each person, however, does their part to make a difference, then the chain reaction would be impossible to not notice. So maybe our rally cry should not be that one person can make a difference, because this assumes that others will still not do their part. Instead, we must teach that a difference can be made if each person does their part, becoming leaders of leaders rather than just leaders of followers.