No material limits

Have you ever felt like you were living a small life? Too many limits on what you can do, perhaps?

Or at least you thought there were limits…

Many people throughout history have seen through the belief of limitation and launched into careers that changed the world and millions of lives.

I like to learn from their examples.

After watching a movie on how Gandhi changed the world, and reading my blog entry on Oprah living a mission driven life, a reader shared some thought-provoking observations.

She wrote:

• Mission driven people hold a number of traits in common that allow them to forge ahead without fearing limits.
• They appear able to live without worry about income. They are living examples of finding the coin in the fish’s mouth as Peter did after Jesus told him where to find needed tax money.
• They are not held back by what other people say they cannot do, or even government laws that would prevent them from accomplishing their mission.
• Their education and social standing does not hold them back.
• Gandhi was a terrific example that being placed in jail did not keep him from accomplishing his mission – in fact it often supported his efforts to help people in India.
• As documented in the film “Inn of the Sixth Happiness,” Gladys Aylward was turned down to be a missionary in China because she was a simple house maid. With very little money of her own, she found backers who believed in her. With the Japanese preparing to invade, she went anyway, helping villagers, and working in an orphanage eventually saving 100 children from perishing.
  

Edward R. Murrow wrote about Gandhi’s funeral:

The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived - a private man without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not a commander of great armies nor ruler of vast lands. He could boast no scientific achievements or artistic gift. Yet men, governments and dignitaries from all over the world have joined hands today to pay homage to this little brown man in the loincloth who led his country to freedom. Pope Pius, the Archbishop of Canterbury, President Truman, Chiang Kai-shek, The Foreign Minister of Russia, the President of France... are among the millions here and abroad who have lamented his passing. In the words of General George C. Marshall, the American Secretary of State, "Mahatma Gandhi had
become the spokesman for the conscience of mankind, a man who made humility and simple truth more powerful than empires.

Gandhi is quoted as saying,

“Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail...always.”

As I think about how Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and others have changed the world with moral and spiritual truths, I can’t help but think each of us have the same potential.

Wealth, position, political office or fame is not necessary to bless mankind. Spiritually progressive ideas are what break the bonds of suffering and set captives free.

There are no limits on hearing these ideas and acting on them.

You can hear them. I can hear them, and we’re all free to act on them.