It

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect and wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Read this on Facebook as I was getting ready to end the work week. What truth is there in it.

A friend of mine recently asked his friends - also on Facebook - why more people don't try to convince others of what they think is right - religiously, politically, morally, or otherwise. Some people responded and said that they didn't try to convince others, because they weren't sure themselves what was "right." Others responded that what seemed most right for some (logic - in the very formal sense) was useless against what felt right for others (faith in a higher being), and vice versa, of course.

When I think of my friend's question and read this quote, I see Jesus, who never said he was God, outright. He was quick to say to others - "That's what you have said of me." But his life was lived with a beauty and constancy and honor and distinction that left no doubt to his followers, as he rose to fulfill his promise, that he was the living God, the word of God made flesh, so that we might know who we are as God's children.

Words would have made Jesus, a normal guy with a normal face, look really stupid. If you or I said we were God, or that we had the "right" idea for world peace, or the end to hunger - just like that - we'd look pretty stupid too. But if we live out who we are at our root, as Jesus did, and as many other very quiet, constant, beautiful people do in this world, we'll draw souls to us and leave no doubt when we leave this earth that we did indeed have had it right all along.

Peace and love and gratitude for those who inspire us to build ships by making us long for the enormity of the sea.