What is it like to be involved in something so big that all you see is one little part; it’s just too big for you to see the big picture. You’re just like a little piece of sand on a seashore, but every little piece of sand is working towards the same thing. I believe that the more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you have.

Have you ever felt like you were one with a crowd of thousands? That thought always reminds me of Ichthus. Ichthus has been going on far before any of us were born, so we cannot say that we were part of its beginning, nor can we say that it would stop if we neglected to attend. Ichthus is not about a single person, or group of people. It is about an idea, or at least it was for those who began it. Have you ever been to Ichthus? There’s energy about the place, the energy of thousands of people, most of whom are just as happy and excited to be there as you are. During the concerts, the level of energy skyrockets as people crowd to the main stage and let themselves get lost in their surroundings. It seems that the crowd’s energy has no bounds. My first concert was not at Ichthus, but Winter Jam my seventh grade year. It was the first time that I had felt the energy that being a part of something that big gives you, and so it in no way escaped my attention. Whenever I began to get tired, I would lose myself in the concert, which was so much bigger than me, and I was filled with new energy.

The same thing seems to happen to me every time I go to camp. I always lose myself in the flow of things. Camp is a place that people seem to never stay still for very long. Everything and everyone is moving. One day of camp I was stuck in a room doing something that I found boring, and I realized that I was exhausted. It was the lack of sleep catching up with me. Even with that knowledge, as soon as I was enveloped by the people with insane amounts of energy, my weariness faded and I got caught up in the vastness of it all.

Speaking of huge, have you ever been working towards a goal, knowing that hundreds, maybe thousands of people were working towards the same one in other cities and states? One of the times that I have felt that was when I went on mission trip with my youth group last summer, to Lakeshore, Mississippi to help clean up the still-existing mess left in the wake of Katrina. So many people assume that that mess has been taken care of by now; but it hasn’t. I found a new definition of hot and humid in Mississippi, however you begin to get used to the heat, or at least learn to tolerate it, after a few days. We would work 10-12 hours a day on 4-6 hours of sleep. It was tiring, but it was worth every second of it. Whenever I would believe that I had nothing left in me with which to continue, I would find that I actually had more energy that I didn’t know was there. There is something about knowing you’re a part of something so much bigger than yourself, that was created by lots of little parts just like you that can keep you going. The more I thought of the reasons we were there and the point that we were not alone in this seemingly impossible mission, the more energy I had.

Have you ever lost yourself in the world around you and basked in the energy it gave? When you do, you learn how much you are actually capable of. When you hit the point where you think you have no energy left, remember that you are just a little part of a bigger picture; you don’t have to do it all yourself. You are like a “grain of sand on the beaches”, and then remember that it takes all the little pieces of sand to make that beach.
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