A woman messaged me on Facebook. She was looking for a man named Mike Davis. Same name as mine — wrong Mike Davis.
She was trying to help track down a man who mentored a young boy more than twenty years ago in Dayton. Owned a car lot. Was a pastor. Took the boy to church with him. That boy is 43 now. Nobody was chasing a reunion. She just wanted him to know he turned out not so bad.
It wasn’t me. I told her that.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation after it ended. Somewhere out there is another Mike Davis who has no idea that boy — now a grown man — still remembers him. Still wanted him found.
That’s when it hit me. I’ve been that other Mike Davis more than once. I just never found out.
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- My daughter told me, a while back, that our family needed to be in church. She wasn’t trying to change my life — just saying what she felt. She had no idea what that one sentence would eventually set off. I’ve written before about how God used that moment in ways neither of us understood at the time. But that’s exactly the point. Sometimes the person planting the seed doesn’t know what they’re planting.
My nephew Brian didn’t set out to build a ministry with me. He said yes to helping his uncle with a website. Neither of us knew where it would go.
And there are kids from years ago — grown now — from a season when I served in youth ministry. I didn’t know, most of that time, which Sunday morning or which conversation would be the one that stuck. Some of them have reached out since, as adults, to tell me it mattered. Most of it, I don’t know about. I never will.
Maybe that other Mike Davis doesn’t even remember everything this man remembers about him. Taking a kid to church didn’t seem extraordinary at the time — opening the door, giving him a ride, talking to him, or simply making room for him just felt like ordinary life. That’s what gets me. We tend to think making a difference requires doing something big. Sometimes somebody remembers you twenty years later because you simply noticed them when they needed to be noticed.
Paul told the Corinthians, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7, NLT). None of us plant knowing which seed takes. We just plant. God decides what grows, and He decides when — sometimes twenty years later, in a Facebook message from a stranger.
I don’t get to see the list of what stuck and what didn’t. None of us do.
Jesus said to let your light shine where people can see it (Matthew 5:16, NLT). Not because you’re chasing an audience. Because you don’t get to pick who’s watching, or when they’ll remember it.
You don’t get to choose which moment becomes the one somebody spends twenty years remembering. So you’d better live like all of them might be.
God, I don’t know who’s watching. I don’t know which conversation, which moment, which small thing I almost skipped will be the one somebody remembers twenty years from now. Help me live like all of them matter, because to You, they do. Thank You for the people who planted in me without knowing it, and for the chance to plant in someone else without needing to see it grow. Amen.
Is there someone from your past who shaped you more than they ever knew? Maybe it’s time to tell them.
Update: She kept looking—and found the right Mike Davis.
