Impossible To Measure

This post is written to link with Five Minute Friday: write for five minutes on a one-word prompt.  The prompt today is “measure.”

How do you measure success?

Many people would measure it in wealth or achievement or happiness.  It’s reaching targets, or winning awards, or acquiring possessions or just reaching a point where you feel good about life.

Even as Christians, we can become fixated on how we measure up: how much time we’re devoting to prayer or Bible study, how much impact we’re seeing in our ministry, how we’re seeing God working through us…

But the more I think about it, the more I see that the things that matter are almost impossible to measure.  Who really knows the impact we’re having?

I see it all the time in working with young people.  At times you feel that your efforts are pointless, that nothing you say is making a difference, that no-one is even listening, but then there are those moments when you suddenly see signs of growth and understand that God was working all along.

I see it in writing.  I try not to measure success in terms of page views or the number of comments but there are times when I write a post that I feel has value, that I hope will encourage others, and it seems like my words drift off into cyberspace completely unnoticed.  But then a message comes from someone saying they have read my blog for months and it has encouraged them but they’ve never commented until now!  I know that I would rather impact one person in a meaningful way than have hundreds read my posts and instantly forget them, but it’s impossible to measure!

All we can do is keep being faithful – keep showing up, keep trusting God, give it our best effort and leave the results to him – because we can’t measure how he is using us.

The true measure of success will come on the day when we stand before God and hope to hear these words:

“Well done, my good and faithful servant.”  (Matthew 25:21 NLT)