Working hard to make a difference? Wonder if your work is worthwhile?

Sometimes it’s easy to feel like you’re adding one small drop to a vast ocean of needs. Then something happens and the drop evaporates – leaving nothing to show for all your work and struggle.

It happened to us. After two years of hard work in Samoa, another cyclone destroyed everything we thought we’d achieved.

For two years after the first cyclone, we worked hard to rebuild and improve our student’s education and thought we’d made some visible progress. For example, I set up and equipped a laboratory so students could do simple science experiments, such as making hydrogen in a test tube.

But just as we were about to leave, a second cyclone descended on us, destroying our world in a cataclysm of savage wind and drenching rain. Even worse than the first, building debris crashed into our house, and we watched part of it disappear into the sea. All that remained of the science lab was a heap of smashed glass marinating in a toxic chemical soup. In nearby villages people sat dazed and homeless among the fragments of their schools, shops, and houses. Leaving a devastated country, there was little or nothing we could point to as a lasting achievement.

So, was it worth it after all that? Was it worthwhile?

Before we left Australia two years earlier, we’d been told to lower our expectations of achieving anything enduring. At best they said, “aspire to be a happy memory in the lives of a few people.”

However reasonable that sounded, we found it emotionally hard to swallow. Arriving in Samoa surrounded by needs, we and our friends soon felt driven to make a difference. We often worked ourselves into the ground, or into a sick bed, trying to improve simple things – like teaching basic high school science.

But even before our encounter with a second cyclone drove the point home, we discovered how difficult it is to make lasting change in any society. Every community maintains a delicate balance of interdependent relationships, cultural complexities, and hidden reasons for the things we want to change. We might think it best to appoint an educated and experienced person to a task, only to discover that without having the right cultural status, no one listens to them. More basically, the change we think is obviously best may not be right for the community we hope to serve.

Faced with these frustrations, at some point most volunteers, expats and aid workers feel like their work is pointless and wonder why they came.

Perhaps you’re a back packer looking to find a purpose for your life. Maybe you hope to change the world by finding a cause big enough to make life meaningful.

We all yearn for meaning and purpose – for our lives to be significant. We often think that achieving something – the fight for a good cause, a growing social media following, an influential career, fame, fortune, or the dream home we’re building, will give us the significance we crave. But what if that’s simply untrue? What if our purpose is not to transform the world but to be transformed? What if it’s not to change the world but to be forever changed?

For us, not only was the effort worthwhile, it was one of the most tangible and enriching experiences in our tangibly fleeting lives. We may not have made much difference to the lives of our students, but they made a big difference to ours. If God put us in Samoa to build our character, to teach us humility, patience, perseverance, and have the opportunity to offer a cup of cold water to a thirsty soul, then we were rewarded in spades. If our real purpose was to learn to act justly, show kindness, walk humbly with God, and learn hard lessons in the cauldron of shared suffering, then we certainly ticked that box.

Crucially, it’s the intentionality of God’s purpose and our relationship with the infinite and eternal Creator that gives ultimate meaning to the smallest of our endeavours. It’s that knowledge that enabled us to look on the wreckage and ruin of two years of work, and be confident it was all worthwhile. Not because we made enduring positive change, but because God used that experience to make lasting change to us.

Read about our battle with Cyclone Ofa and its aftermath in my book ENCOUNTER – A Journey into Chaos, Culture and Compassion available on my website at https://ianreilly.com.au/product/encounter-book/ .