Do you ever feel like you aren’t making a difference? Maybe you think you’re replaceable and anyone could do what you do. Maybe you feel like a failure. We all feel like that from time to time. For some of us it gets so bad we wish we’d never been born.

When that happens, it’s time to George Bailey your life.

Remember George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life? He had so many things go wrong that he actually wished he’d never been born. God gave him that wish and he found out just how many lives he had touched and just how important he was. He stopped a pharmacist from giving a boy poison instead of medicine. He saved his brother’s life in childhood and his brother later saved a couple hundred men in WWII. He helped hundreds of people afford good homes. He and his wife created a beautiful family that wouldn’t have existed without him.

It was a wonderful life.

My preacher reminded me of that last Sunday. He was using the story to wonder how the world would be different if the church had never been created.

It got me to thinking, what would be different if I had never been born? What would be different if you hadn’t been? We can’t know for sure, but we do know some things. I know my two daughters, Faith and Summer would not exist. That’s enough reason for me to be born, right there. Of course, my wife could never have found as great a husband…ok, I better stop.

But let’s go deeper. How many people would have lost a friend, coworker, mentor, brother, sister, mother, father, or child if we hadn’t been born? What would have happened to your friend you helped get a job or the elderly lady down the street whose lawn you mowed last week?

Spend just a little time thinking about this and you will begin to realize how many lives you have touched. Each life you’ve influenced created ripple effects that carry on across countless lives.

As George Bailey’s angel, Clarence, put it, “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

Ask yourself, how many lives will you make an impact on today and for the rest of your life?

You know, it really is a wonderful life.

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