the mango tree

Years ago, I started sponsoring a child through Compassion for thirty dollars a month. It was the kind of decision you almost do not remember making. A form, a card, an amount small enough that it never once made me feel it.

Then I went to Kenya, and I met him.

I am not going to be able to explain to you what it does to your insides to stand in front of a name that had only ever been a line item on your bank statement. The thirty dollars a month I had barely noticed leaving my account had become food, and school, and a family that could breathe. And while I was there, they showed me a mango tree that the sponsorship had helped put in the ground. A tree. Something that would keep feeding people long after the thirty dollars and long after me.

I have thought about that tree more times than I can count, usually when I am tempted to believe that the small faithful thing does not matter.

Here is what I want you to hear, especially if you are building something and it feels slow. You do not get to see the mango tree from where you are standing right now. You plant into ground you will never fully see, and the compounding happens on a timeline that is not yours. The thirty dollars did not feel like anything. The tree was enormous. The gap between those two things is the entire Christian life, and it is the entire business too.

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We have this idea that impact has to feel big to be big. So we despise the small consistent thing. The one more helpful email. The offer that only serves twelve people well instead of twelve hundred people poorly. The quiet Tuesday where you did the unglamorous work nobody clapped for. That is the thirty dollars. You are not supposed to feel it. You are supposed to plant it and trust the One who grows trees.

So this week, do not go looking for the big swing. Find the small faithful thing you have been skipping because it felt too minor to matter, and do it. Then do it again next week. That is how mango trees happen.

Hit reply and tell me the small thing you are going to plant. I love these, and I read every one.

With you,

Rachel

P.S. If part of what is stopping you is that your business is not yet built to hold steady while you plant slow, that is fixable, and it is most of what the Kingdom Profit Plan walks you through. It is free, link is below.https://rachelngom.com/profit