Costa Clems

I remember sitting in the back of our minivan in 1992 in Abbottsford B.C. Canada. I think it was in the parking lot of a Home Depot and my mom and my sister were going in to shop for some home improvement items that as an 11 year old boy didn’t interest me at all. What did interest me was listening to my new CD, “Change Your World,” by Michael W. Smith. I loved that album and as a pastor’s kid who had grown up homeschooled until 4th grade living in Canada, that album and especially “Cross of Gold” was about as close to rock and roll as I had been so far.

There is no song on that album called “Change Your World” and there isn’t even really a song that is specifically about changing the world, but that album still sticks in my head as the “change your world” album because that was the cover and title. Most of us don’t really have that experience anymore—of staring at a CD case or vinyl cover while listening to an album from start to finish arranged by the artist and the producer. My kids have no idea what it’s like to listen to songs “in order”… they have Spotify.

This post isn’t about 90’s music, or CD culture, or even Michael W. Smith but it is about changing the world. When I think about changing the world I think about lasting permanent impact that affects populations and generations and decade and such. But there are lots of changes that are more subtle than Martin Luther King Jr, the iPhone, the interstate system, or World War II. There are small changes that impact the world.

As we sit here at our farm in Costa Rica, Jenna has found a stack of the promotional materials that the previous owners used to promote the cabin, their dinner service, the tilapia, tours in the area, and tours of the Vanilla Farm. One of the things they had set out to do was buy a completely de-forested piece of property and over decades replant several hundreds of trees to change the world in a way that they perceived was important. One of the things they said they produced on this farm was oxygen and by measuring that they meant to show how they had made a positive change by replacing hundreds and hundreds of trees that had been chopped down for lumber by someone who was changing the the world in a different way, through industry, infrastructure, and population growth.

Have you ever changed the world? Probably. So have I. If you have kids you have changed the world, if you ever planted a tree you changed the world, if you ever chose to kill or spare a bug or an animal you changed the world. Maybe not for millions, maybe not in the grand scheme of things, but you changed the world for that bug for sure!

A couple of weeks ago, right after the Seahawks won Super Bowl 60 (couldn’t resist!) we needed to go get a new car because our previous car was literally falling apart. Read about that particular journey here. That meant a journey over to the Pacific Coast; while we were in the process of purchasing the car we took some time to go to the beach where I decided that I wanted to make a small change in the world. This particular change was going to maybe be just a private joke for me but it was still going to be a symbolic act of changing the world.

I took my waterbottle and I waded into the Pacific Ocean and filled it up with a part of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean according to my good buddy Google is approximately 187 quintillion gallons, (1.87X10^20… so 187 followed by 17 zeroes!). But I filled my half gallon water bottle and took that half gallon away, making it a half gallon shallower.

Why? What difference could it possibly make? With climate change and polar ice caps melting and the sheer size of the ocean and the fact that all the oceans are connected anyway—it seemed a silly and symbolic gesture of change. In fact it seemed like no change at all.

But then we took that drive back to our house and I brought half a gallon of the Pacific Ocean with me. And I kept it for 2 weeks. And then for my birthday we took a trip to the Caribbean side of the country to play for a couple of days (I also blogged some musing on my birthday) And I took that water bottle full of the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean.

And when we got there on my birthday I did something fun to celebrate—I changed the water table of two oceans by adding 0.5 gallons of the Pacific to the Caribbean, which is only 1.6 quadrillion gallons so like 1000 times smaller than the Pacific, but which has now gained by a half gallon thanks to my efforts.

So, did I change the world? Yeah I did. Will it affect anyone or anything or ever even be noticeable? Probably not. Except that I’m talking about it here, and that my kids will remember watching me do this, and I’ll be using the story years from now as a sermon illustration. This little change will have a ripple effect (pun 100% intended).

The question is, will you be so discouraged by the smallness of the change your are able to make that you won’t bother making it? Will the fact that no one notices, or that it will eventually be forgotten, or in the grand scheme of things that the changes you can make by not yelling at someone, by showing love when anger was easier, by giving $20 to a cause you believe in, by stopping to help someone instead of rushing on to the next thing—will the smallness of these acts seem so insignificant to you that you won’t bother? Or will you remember that changes can be small and still change the world? That 10 songs (plus a re-recording of an 11th) in the sea of all pop or Christian pop music in the 90’s still sticks in my head as a moment where I thought about whether or not I would change the world. I’ve made bigger more significant changes, but that shouldn’t stop the small ones. Little changes that feel like half a gallon in something as big as the Pacific Ocean…. but make you think: what if 7 billion people did this? What if they did it 10 times each, or 100? How long before small changes become big ones? Let’s find out! Change your world.