A pastor wrote: ‘What makes you glad or sad or mad? What puts a holy smile on your face? What causes your spirit to sob uncontrollably? What makes you pound your fist on the table out of righteous indignation? Somewhere in the mixture of that gladness, sadness, and madness is your God-ordained passion. Or maybe we should say compassion, because you are feeling what God feels. And once you identify it, doing something about it isn’t optional. You can’t not do something about it.’ In 2006, Blake Mycoskie was touring Argentina when he noticed that many of the children didn’t have shoes. He could have returned to the United States and gone about his business. Instead, he started TOMS shoes, a business with a mission of putting shoes on the feet of children in developing countries. It works like this: when you buy a pair of TOMS shoes, you’re giving a pair of shoes to a barefoot child somewhere. For every pair of shoes purchased, a pair is given away. Their mission is straightforward: one for one. Blake identified a need. He personalised it. And he decided to do something about it. It didn’t start big, it started small. But that’s how first moments begin. A person decides to do something about something that makes them glad or sad or mad. It was barefoot children who broke Blake’s heart so much that he had to do something about it. When you discover the thing that makes you glad or sad or mad, the only question left is this: what are you going to do about it? It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be big – just take small steps, with God, and see what His power can bring out of your compassion.
