When I make a choice to talk to one person for an hour, I cannot talk to 100 people for that hour. It is a choice.

The work of Jesus was full of one-hour conversations with one or two people. Those are the conversations we have little record of. But that one hour spent with that one person may change everything. For that one person. As they discovered that someone loves them.

We can worry for hours about what other people’s actions mean. We can talk for hours about what other people’s words mean.

Or we can spend an hour of that worry and talk time in conversation with one person. Or in serving one person. It’s an investment in obedience to the one who said to find him with the little children and the least and widows and orphans and those in prison and those who are sick and those who are homeless and those who are hungry.

As chaplains, our days are filled with these conversations with one or two people at a time. We have to learn that these conversations count, in a culture that counts the size of the audience as a measure of success. But you may need permission to accept that your small conversations are significant, too.

They are.