One Drop

It’s our nature to judge ourselves by comparison.

We imagine life works like a ledger.

Good on one side.
Bad on the other.

And as long as the good outweighs the bad…
we assume everything will somehow work out.

The strange thing is…

At some level, we know this is not how life actually works.

If I stood before a judge after taking forty nine lives, would I defend myself by saying,

“But Your Honor, I could have taken one hundred.”

Would the fifty one I spared somehow erase the forty nine I took?

Of course not.

So let’s improve the numbers.

What if I took only one life?

Just one.

Ninety-nine good decisions.
One terrible one.

How exactly is that going to work out for me?

Or imagine making breakfast.

You crack eight eggs into a bowl.

Seven are fresh.
One is rotten.

Do you shrug and say,

“Seven out of eight isn’t bad.”

Do you cook it anyway?

Probably not.

A twelve-ounce bottle of water contains roughly 7,100 drops.

Pure.
Clean.
Life-giving.

Now add one drop of poison.

Just one.

Do you drink it?

Of course not.

The entire bottle is now tainted.

And suddenly all the good no longer matters.

We are broken.

Additionally, we do not simply judge ourselves by our own scorecard.
We also judge ourselves by comparing ourselves to others.

“At least I’m not Hitler”, we say to ourselves.

But imagine with me a competition at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

A thousand people line up.

The challenge is simple.

Jump across.

One person jumps five feet.

Another jumps twenty.

One extraordinary athlete jumps twice as far as everyone else.

But eventually…

every one of them disappears into the canyon below.

Because in some situations, comparison means nothing.

It doesn’t matter who jumped farther.

You still missed.

And perhaps this is where many of us quietly begin to realize something unsettling.

We cannot do this.

Not because we have not tried hard enough.

Not because others have done better.

But because the distance itself was never crossable to begin with.

Perhaps you are beginning to ask the question you have spent your life trying to avoid.

If I cannot get there on my own. . .

Is there any hope?

Is there another way?

And perhaps…

that is the most honest thought you’ve have had yet.

And perhaps that is where the real story begins.

If questions like this resonate with you, I invite you to continue exploring with me.

Join the Journey – WAYPOINT
A weekly reflection for those learning to look beyond the surface . . .and discover the larger story we have inherited.

The Return of Heaven – Exploring the story behind the story . . . and why reality may be far bigger than we imagined.