Progress is best measured by independent, external actions. When I can see tangible results – people taking decisions, making choices or talking about something they value – and the results mark progress, I know progress is real.
I am on a difficult assignment. While I can influence, I have no strings I can pull to reward or incent behaviors. My ability to use a stick is limited. My initial belief was that I had taken on something impossible. While I still think it is difficult, I find myself reveling in unexpected outcomes. My skeptic is embracing the fresh ideas as if they were his own. He is championing and speaking as if he is the author. It is wonderful! It is an outcome with hope and possibilities.
I realize that there are lessons in this chapter that are fresh. Three sit at the top.
Great ideas are dormant words until someone embraces them. What makes something original is the recognition that this is the time and place to put the ideas to use. Living and using ideas are what give them life. Ideas live because of our community and the actions that people, you and me, take.
Success is rarely the result of just one thing. Yes, people work hard. Yes, individuals and singular action can define pieces, even the whole. It takes a minimum of two to make success. Ideally it comes through a community of those that believe and act on a shared idea.
Realizing the impossible is not, for me, about ribbons and recognition. One knows the impossible is real when one sees the idea is alive in the lives of others. They own it. They have their ways of describing and shaping its story. They drive its use forward, not because they sense an obligation or requirement. They act on it because they believe.
I could say that “I smash the bands of marauders, I vault the highest fences.” (Psalm 18.29) I could, but that would miss the bigger story. God was with us. We did the impossible. It lives in and through us.
