Retirement has been hard for me. I am not doing it well. What I have done for the past forty-plus years has defined me. I have had a very difficult time separating who I am from what I do. I was (am?) a minister in a variety of positions – local church, denominational, national, conference, and online – for the better part of five decades. And what does it all mean? Pretty much, nothing.

In the grand scheme of things – the eternal, global, universal, ethereal reality – nothing I have done makes the least bit of difference. Decades from now, I will be forgotten, irrelevant, insignificant, and immaterial. Yes, a book I have written may languish on a forgotten church library shelf, but I will, alas, be meaningless. Will my family remember me? Sure, for a time. Will the church remember me? For a much shorter time. Will the world remember me? It doesn’t even know me now. What difference do I make?

It brings to mind the Hindu/Buddhist teaching, “Nothing matters, everything matters.” In the grand scheme of things, nothing much that we do makes a singular bit of difference. Sure, we can point to a handful of lives and say, “Oh, man, see how significant they were?” But in the long run, I mean thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years – so what?

I think a lot about the things I have accomplished, and I feel a sense of pride. But I also think about all the things I DIDN’T accomplish and I am ashamed. But then, but then…

I studied economics as an undergraduate, and I excelled. I was top in my class. I won awards. I once wrote a paper that I received a $500 prize for. It focused on the importance of micro-economics over macro-economics – that what is done on the local and imminent level is always more important than what is done on the global and impending level. What you can do is more important than what you would like to do. God, I was smart.

See, none of us can impact the macro-level. None of us can change reality for the whole, but if we are lucky, we can change reality one person at a time. We can offer a word of grace, a healing sentiment, a compelling idea, a seed of transformation. I, as many people have, have received notes and comments of great import and impact – “What you said changed my life,” “What you did made a huge difference to me,” “I will never forget what you said or did.”

We do not live on the macro-level; only God does. We live here, now, day-to-day, minute-by-minute, and our whole opportunity for impact or good exists in the way we live each day. I can only offer what I know, what I think I know, what I believe and hope that it offers grace, clarity, help or hope. I have tried to do this throughout my ministry. Sometimes I have been misunderstood, but sometimes? By God’s grace? By God’s love? By God’s Spirit? I have helped people. I have offered value. I have done good.

In the grand scheme of things, I may be as irrelevant and unnoticeable as a grain of sand. But in relationships, in moments of connection, in times of grace and gift, I have done well. May this be true for us all.