The Encourager

One thousand pinpricks in a cloud that hovered too low over a garden of roses and forgot about the thorns.

(Il pleu.)

If you are an encourager, verve occasionally meets its nemesis too large and natural vigour drains from you like rain from a cloud. Why might this happen? You are built and equipped to encourage, surely in all things? The encourager naturally sees possibility where others do not. A fierce grip on all that could be keeps something sparking inside, sometimes long after you should have sensibly backed off. 

I think people who burn with this insatiable, relentless pioneering spirit for the possibility of good in the world are amazing, unbelievable, brave beings. I think to be an encourager—the light in the darkness—is one of the most uncomfortable calls a person can be handed. To shine in darkness you have to go to darkness. It is not so much something you choose, as something you find is happening to you. But this role is also one of excitement, because it means coming in really close to people when they are right on the brink and urging them to keep going, there when the corner is turned. The encourager somehow sees the sense in persevering. There is a glint in their eye; you know it when you see it.

Sometimes—like the cloud—they become so smitten with the roses and forget to be on their guard against thorns. They have love in their gut, and are helpless with it, but that is good for the world.

Do you know someone like this? Be their encourager today.

{Today's Soundtrack: Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell}