Today's PAYG invited the listener to think of people who had been significant in their own faith or life story... a familiar exercise, and I worked hard not to settle for the 'usual suspects' but to try to think more widely of people who have challenged and changed my thinking, as well as people who have affirmed and encouraged me. Who, I thought to myself, has affected my thinking or believing and how or why is that.
Then I drifted into wondering whose lives I have impacted and in what way - not some kind of smug, self-satisfied listing of baptisms or church memebrs or converts or whatever, but a more reflective wondering of how what I have said, done, written, or not said, not done, not written, might have impacted people for ill or good, in tiny ways or more noticeable ways.
I wonder, as I draw up my standard list of Sunday School teachers, preachers, GB leaders, theologians and writers who it was who influenced them - who are the unnamed previous geenration of inspirers, shapers, challengers, changers? And, should my name ever appear in anyone's list, who will be listed there also, and who inspired or influenced them?
It is sobering to think that someone, somewhere, might think I was signfiicant in their story... and more sobering still to contemplate why that might be. Way back, when I first sensed a call to ministry, I remember telling someone that my biggest fear was that something I said or did might damaged someone's faith or relationship with God... I think that's still the case, but perhaps I am now less certain what it is that is, ultimately, damaging and what it is that is, ultimately, affirming.
My list of influencers and inspirers is long and varied. I'd like to imagine that one day, in the great hereafter, they would meet and marvel at how they, in their diversity made me who I am and what I have yet to become. Such is the mystery of God's work.
