You Can Do Hard ThingsSample

Now Is the Time

Clara was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1821. She was a timid child, so terrified of strangers that she was hardly able to speak. Then something happened that would change her life forever. When she was eleven years old, her older brother David fell from the roof of a barn and was seriously injured. Young Clara was frantic and begged for the chance to help care for him.

Once in the sickroom, Clara surprised everyone by demonstrating all the qualities of an experienced nurse. She learned better than anyone how to make her brother comfortable. Little by little, the doctor allowed her to take over all of his care, with his complete recovery taking two years.

At the age of fourteen Clara became the nurse for her father’s hired man, who had come down with smallpox, and then began to help more patients as the epidemic spread through the Massachusetts village where she lived. Still shy and timid, Clara’s desire to serve others drove her to overcome her fears. By age seventeen, she was a successful schoolteacher with over forty students.

Clara was given increasing responsibility at an early age and she not only survived; she rose to the occasion. Today, Clara Barton is best known as the founder of the Red Cross. Her desire to serve others started when she was eleven years old, caring for her brother, and it grew from there—to the sick in her village, to the children at the school where she taught, to thousands of wounded men in the Civil War, and later to millions through the American Red Cross.

We’re not suggesting your career path will look like Clara Barton’s. We are suggesting that there’s a reason we still know Clara’s name: she invested her teen years in a way that shaped her into a history maker. Choosing to do hard things as a teenager prepared her for a life of incredible impact.

We need to be honest with ourselves: Is how we’re spending our time right now preparing us for what we hope to become in the future? Are we doing things now that will equip us for the greater things God may have for us to do?

The teenage years aren’t a mystical period disconnected from the rest of your life. For good or bad, your teenage years will launch you into the future. As you turn to today’s Scripture reading, ask God to guide you in making the most of this exciting season.

In what ways are your choices today preparing you to be a person who makes a positive impact on others’ lives?