One of my favorite true stories makes a great thought for the New Year, when we're all setting new goals and trying to form new habits. It also inspired the motto that appears on the cover of each issue of Activated: "Change your life. Change your world."

Perhaps you remember it from David Brandt Berg's article in one of the first issues of Activated. It's about a humble shepherd who single-handedly transformed a barren region of southern France by planting nuts as he watched his sheep graze on a different hillside each day. Over 20 or 30 years that one shepherd reforested the entire area, which brought back the wildlife and improved the soil for farming. After that, more people moved to the once nearly deserted region and it became alive and prosperous. The shepherd slowly but surely changed his part of the world.

What turned out to be a great thing was probably the result of a sudden inspiration. How many others, do you suppose, would have brushed off the idea as crazy, impossible, or not their job? Not this shepherd. He believed and put his inspired idea into action.

He had a simple goal and a simple plan. We don't know, but he probably didn't set out to change things on such a grand scale. Good things have a way of growing when we rise to the challenge.

What he did each day wasn't especially difficult, but he stuck with it day after day. Great things are often the result of patient plodding.

He worked in partnership with God. He did what he could do and trusted God to do the rest.

What crazy impossible idea do you have for the New Year? It may not be as crazy or impossible as you think, if God is in it. Go ahead. Change your life. Change your world.

Keith Phillips
For the Activated Family