Hello readers! I’ve been greatly enjoying “The Seven Decisions:
Understanding the Keys to Personal Success” by Andy Andrews and wanted
to share this historical account with you. Do yourself a huge favor and
read “The Traveler’s Gift” first though!
Andy was ironing his shirt one evening in his hotel room when he heard the anchor on a network news show announce Norman Borlaug as the person of the week. Andy ran to the television and heard that Borlaug was credited with saving the lives of over two billion people on our planet. Andy stated he was blown away, not knowing the 91 year old man was still alive. Andy knew Borlaug had hybridized corn and wheat for arid climates. Actually, he won the Nobel Prize because he discovered how to grow a specific type of corn and wheat that saved the lives of people in Africa, Europe, Siberia, and Central and South America. Borlaug was being credited with saving, literally, two billion people on our planet.
The reporter was misinformed, however; Andy knew it wasn’t Norman Borlaug who saved the two billion people. It was Henry Wallace. Henry Wallace was the vice president of the United States during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. However, the former secretary of agriculture was replaced for Roosevelt’s second term in favor of Truman. While Wallace was vice president of the United States, he used the power of that office to create a station in Mexico whose sole purpose was to hybridize corn and wheat for arid climates. He hired a young man named Norman Borlaug to run it. So, Borlaug got the Nobel Prize and person of the week, but wasn’t it really Wallace who saved the two billion people?
Or was it George Washington Carver? Before Carver ever made his amazing discoveries about peanuts and sweet potatoes, he was a student at Iowa State University. There, he had a dairy sciences professor who allowed his six-year-old son to go with Carver on botanical expeditions on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Carver instilled in him a love for plants and a vision for what they could do for humanity. George Washington Carver pointed Henry Wallace’s life in that direction long before that little boy ever became vice president of the United States.
So, when you think about it, it is amazing how George Washington Carver “flapped his butterfly wings” with a six-year-old boy and just happened to save the lives of two billion people and counting. So perhaps Carver should be person of the week?
Or should it have been the farmer named Moses from Diamond, Missouri? Moses and his wife, Susan, lived in a slave state, but they didn’t believe in slavery, which was a problem for a group of psychopaths called Quantrill’s Raiders, who terrorized the area by destroying property, burning, and killing. One cold January night, Quantrill’s Raiders rolled through Moses and Susan’s farm, burned the barn, and shot and grabbed some people. One of these was a woman named Mary Washington, who refused to let go of her infant child, George. Mary Washington was Susan’s best friend, and Susan was distraught. Quickly, Moses sent word out through neighbors and towns and managed to secure a meeting with Quantrill’s Raiders a few days later.
Moses rode several hours north to a crossroads in Kansas to meet four of Quantrill’s Raiders. They showed up on horseback, carrying torches, flour sacks tied over their heads, with holes cut out for their eyes. Moses traded the only horse he had left on his farm for what they threw him in a burlap bag.
As they thundered off on their horses, Moses knelt and pulled a little baby out of that bag, cold and almost dead. He put that child inside his coat next to his chest and walked him home through the freezing night. He talked to the child, promising him he would raise him as his own. He promised to educate him and honor his mother, whom Moses knew was already dead. And he told that baby that he would give him his name.
And that is how Moses and Susan Carver came to raise that little baby, George Washington Carver. So, when you think about it, it was really the farmer from Diamond, Missouri, who saved the two billion people—unless . . .
The point is that we could continue this journey back through to antiquity. Who really knows who saved those two billion people? Who knows whose actions at a particular time were responsible for changing the entire course of the planet—two billion people and counting!
And who knows whose future will be changed by your actions today and tomorrow and the next day and the next.
BOTTOM LINE:
Depending on Almighty God’s timetable, there may well be generations yet unborn whose very lives depend upon the choices you make because everything you do matters—not just for you, not just for your family, not just for your hometown. Everything you do matters to all of us—forever.”
now for merlins two cents:
I agree 2 billion lives saved is a monumental accomplishment, and there are likely a few more such unsung heroes. Fact is, on the other side of the coin, I’d wager there are likely historical accounts both centuries ago, and perhaps even last year, where unbelievable atrocities whether geo-political, environmental, medical, judicial, corporate greed, human trafficking, etc., did not make the news, at least, YET.
But in the final analysis of whose future will be changed by your actions this coming week, actually tomorrow, as we once again will be privileged to enter Lent, may we each be uniquely reminded that all of our lives have an ultimate destination and even a recorded destiny, so we can rest in His perspective as we encounter scads of consuming trivial distractions that are attempting to usurp, actually downright destroy, our determination to keep His Circle Unbroken! I personally prefer the first rendition below, roughly 18 years ago, but I was looking for a choral piece, of course. The second is just too glitzy for me!