Can One Person Make a Difference?

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Can One Person Make a Difference?

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Can one person make a difference?  In light of the myriad of problems that mankind faces we can often think that we cannot make much of a difference, seeing ourselves as just one person adrift in the sea of humanity. We might ask ourselves, “How can I make a difference in world hunger, or world peace or even the salvation of mankind?  While I might help in my own small way, how can that make much of a difference?”

Elmer Bendiner was part of a flight crew for a B-17 Flying Fortress doing bombing runs over Germany toward the end of WWII.  These were hazardous flights, as you can imagine, with enemy planes and the batteries shooting flak to try to stop as many of these bombers as possible – and succeeding in many, many cases.  In his book, The Fall of Fortresses, he describes one bombing run over the German city of Kassel:

“Our B-17 (The Tondelayo) was barraged by flak from Nazi anti-aircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a twenty-millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple. On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief told Bohn that not just one shell but eleven had been found in the gas tanks – eleven unexploded shells where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky. It was as if the sea had been parted for us. Even after thirty-five years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn.

He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer. Apparently when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were clean as a whistle and just as harmless. Empty? Not all of them. One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually, they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read: ‘This is all we can do for you now.’"

During WWII the Germans forced many prisoners to work in their factors building airplanes, making guns and bullets and many other items to support their war effort.  If the prisoners refused to work they were killed, if the prisoners tried to sabotage the assembly of whatever items they were working on they were killed, if the prisoners became too weak or infirmed to work they were sent to internment camps (where more often they not they died).  The anonymous person working on the ammunition line knew they were literally putting their life on the line – and yet they knew they still had a choice.  That choice may not determine the outcome of the war, but it could make a difference to change the course of many, many lives.

Can one person make a difference?  One person can make a difference, especially with God’s help, as we read in Romans 8:31b, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”  Who will you help this week in their fight against Satan?  What example will you set this week to give someone else strength to continue in God’s way?  How will you lay down your life (John 15:13) this coming week for a friend?  What will you do this coming week that will make a difference?