Born For This

The Wright Brothers were the first to fly, but they weren’t the first to try.

Not by a long shot.

For more than fifty years, humans had been actively working on the problem (after thousands of years of dreaming about it). Many brave people tried for years in vain, often at the cost of their very lives. Most considered it impossible.

But when the Wright Brothers succeeded, they became a match that lit the way forward.

They shared the joy of flying with others. In his first public demonstrations in Europe, Wilbur would take a passenger into the air with him. The brothers also eagerly trained new pilots. Soon after their success, countless others followed, and in short order, aviation boomed across the world.

After fifty years of collective failure, the work and the example of the brothers opened the floodgates. Orville himself lived to see aviation transformed by jet propulsion, the introduction of the rocket, and the breaking of the sound barrier in 1947. On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in western Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 Flyer.

It reminds me of another pioneer named Roger Bannister, who was the first to run a mile in less than four minutes. People said it couldn’t be done. Doctors suggested you could die in the process of even attempting it. And yet after Bannister proved it was possible, Australian John Landy did it himself just six weeks later.

You can just do things.

But sometimes we need someone to show us a something can be done for us to believe we can do it ourselves.

One family Kim and I knew before having children was a match that sparked our own belief that we could travel with kids. Our daughter Lucy ended up on 34 flights before her first birthday.

And all the homeschooling parents we encountered who had raised successful children doing amazing things in the world were matches that gave us the confidence that maybe would could, too.

What if someone is waiting for you to be the example they need?

You and me, we’re like matches.

A match is not made to sit in a box, unlit, forever. It was designed to create a fire, but not one kept to itself.

You were made with specific talents to achieve a specific purpose. Part of that purpose in life is to make a difference in the lives of others. And just like a match, you get one shot. You have to give it your all.

Of course, it’s scary!

You have the option to embrace the status quo, like the other matches in this painting, preferring comfort and protecting themselves. But they are not fulfilling their potential.

That is not why they were made.

If God planted a dream in your heart, you have the moral imperative to chase it. Because your example might be exactly what someone else needs to achieve theirs.

Your spark can enflame and bring life to others.

As St. Catherine of Siena said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

You were born for this.