What can one person do? What difference does it make?
It is a fact that rock—hard, lifeless rock—can become soil that is rich and fertile and workable. So rich that the world’s hungry can be fed from its tableland. So pliable that a child can let the soil run through his fingers. How does it happen? What forces are brought to bear against such unyielding material?
A raindrop will do it. Or a snowflake. A seedling wafted by a breeze from a nearby tree. Or the tendrils of a wildflower whose fate it is to hug the inhospitable surface of some granite face.
Is it true? Can such little things make a world of difference? Pedologists, the uptown name given to soil scientists, speak about the physical disintegration and chemical decomposition of rock. Sometimes water droplets penetrate a rock surface and then freeze within, expanding and physically breaking the rock. At other times the water dissolves minerals in the rock.
Wind, snow, ice, lichens, tree roots, and scores of other almost imperceptible forces slowly turn rock into soil. In a similar way, our often flinty hearts yield to the gentle influence of little things. Have you not found this to be true in your life? A little kindness shown; a little word of correction, instruction, comfort, or encouragement; a little word of prayer in a moment of crisis; a little verse of Scripture applied by the Spirit to our need; a snatch of a meaningful hymn—and what could have been a hardening experience actually softens us.
I remember words and deeds like that in my life. The gentle hand of Dave Sylvester on my shoulder after a baptism and his even gentler words, “What hinders you from being baptized?” The soft and kindly voice of Les Dockstader (a one-time bare-fisted boxer before God softened him through the gospel) who took me aside after a Lord’s Supper in which my voice had not been heard: “Who was sitting on your knee this morning?” Or the words of a dear sister who stood by, watching an older brother straighten me out after I had preached. “Listen to that brother,” she said, “it will be a great help to you if you learn to take correction. But I want you to know that you were an encouragement to me tonight.”
Of course we know that, under pressure, soil can turn into rock as well. Sedimentary rock once provided a place where life could be sustained, could flourish. But under such pressure as would squeeze the life out of it, the soil became rock. So, too, the hard things of life can make us hard. Beaten down by circumstances, we can find our souls becoming lifeless and unfeeling. Is there hope when we look within only to find a barren wasteland where once a flourishing garden grew? We feel like we fit the Lord’s description of leviathan: “His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone” (Job 41:24). Is there any hope for us?
The Lord promised Israel that He would restore the wilderness land He had given them: “The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isa. 35:1). But He said He could also do something with their desert-hearts: “A new heart also will I give you…I will take away the stony heart…and I will give you an heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).
What a world of difference the Lord can make in others’ lives through us! What power for blessing (or bane) we have in our words and deeds. “A word fitly spoken” is as healthful as an apple, as valuable as gold, and a beautiful as a fine painting (Prov. 25:11). An unknown author has written this reminder to us all:
What will it matter in a little while
That for a day we met and gave a word,
A touch, a smile upon the way?
What will it matter whether hearts were brave,
And lives were true, that you gave me
The sympathy I craved, as I gave you?
These trifles, can it be
They make or mar a human life?
Are souls as lightly waved as rushes
Are by storm or strife? Yes! Yes!
A look the failing heart may break,
Or make it whole;
And just a word said for love’s sweet sake
May save a soul.