Several years ago Alvar Persson was elected mayor of Grove City, Minnesota.
It was an unusual election, partly because of the size of the victory – Persson garnered eighty percent of the vote – partly because Persson is a Lutheran minister and not a politician, but mostly because Persson wasn’t even running for office.
No one was. Next to the word Mayor on the ballot was a blank space.
Only write-in votes could be cast. Of the eleven people whose names were written in, Persson was the clear choice – 202 votes of the 255 cast.
After the election, Persson was asked his reaction. He could only say: “I’m touched by this honor. But I didn’t ask for it. Why pick me?”
Ordinary people doing astonishing things
Some of the world’s greatest men and women have been saddled with disabilities and adversities but have managed to overcome them.
Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan.
Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington.
Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.
Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he will never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, who set a world’s record in 1934 for running a mile in 4 minutes, 6.7 seconds.
Deafen a genius composer, and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven.
Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Harriet Tubman, a Marian Anderson, or a George Washington Carver.
Make him the first child to survive in a poor Italian family of eighteen children, and you have an Enrico Caruso.
Have him born of parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp, paralyze him from the waist down when he is four, and you have an incomparable concert violinist, Itzhak Perlman.
Call him a slow learner, “retarded,” and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.
What Seems Like Ordinary Can Become Extraordinary
A water bearer had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck.
One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.
At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made.
But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After 2 yrs of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to
the water bearer one day by the stream.
“I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you. I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.
Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said.
The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers
only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?
That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you’ve watered them.
For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to
decorate the table.
Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”
What We Think is Ordinary God Makes Into the Extraordinary
See the things in your life that you feel are ordinary and see how God will make extraordinary things come into reality
Be a Miracle
Jerry