Life Changing Phrases

John Clay­pool passed away a year or two ago. He was quite a min­is­ter. His writ­ings and recorded ser­mons still cir­cu­late among an appre­cia­tive and very wide audi­ence. I met him in Lub­bock, Texas at a sem­i­nar. A few years later I heard him speak in Hous­ton. It was not any pro­found the­ol­ogy that I remem­ber about him. I just remem­ber one story, but that story changed my per­spec­tive on what is truly impor­tant.
As the story goes, John was in his first year of col­lege and pon­der­ing just quit­ting and going home. He sat by him­self in the col­lege cafe­te­ria — eat­ing alone — and won­der­ing what to do. An upper­class­man saw him and made his way over to John. He lis­tened to John’s dis­cour­ag­ing dis­course on col­lege strug­gles for sev­eral min­utes. The upper­class­man was well known. John was pretty much a nobody on cam­pus. Why would some­one so secure come over and lis­ten to this “under­ling” and his mis­eries? That was the ques­tion in the back of John’s mind.
When John asked why the upper­class­man cared, he got a response that turned him around. It was a sim­ple phrase that he pon­dered for life, and used as a reminder about get­ting out of his own mis­eries and into the ser­vice of God and oth­ers. This is the phrase: “What hap­pens to you makes a dif­fer­ence to me.” The fact that John was being watched by a car­ing per­son — many ways his supe­rior — helped him find the spir­i­tual energy not to give up.
What hap­pens to oth­ers affects us all. We are not islands unto our­selves. It ben­e­fits us all when each of us rises to his or her full poten­tial. More than that, our com­pas­sion for oth­ers is not a mere social nicety. It is God at work on earth through us. That unknown upper­class­men may never have had his fif­teen min­utes of fame. He may have had a seem­ingly mediocre exis­tence. No one knows. One thing is cer­tain though, he put a per­son back on track. In turn, that per­son inspired many thou­sands — per­haps mil­lions.
Small things said are poten­tially really big things accom­plished in extended time. A sin­gle sen­tence at the right time, and from the right heart, can turn a whole world around. Today you may be the one that utters a life-changing phrase.