These are good things -- wanting to make our worlds better places because we existed and lived in them.
So, I'm going to tell you a way you can make a history today. Here it is: write letters. Write to people you love. Write to people who admire you. Write, write, write...Oh, and send them too! A postage stamp continues to be the best bargain we can find in communication.
I am writing a Bible study for writers presently and I wrote a chapter on letter writing. I quoted an article from a national magazine that bears repeating here. I'll just cut and paste from the study:
An article written in 2009 for Newsweek by Writer Malcom Jones entitled The History and Lost Art of Letter Writing states, “The decline in letter writing constitutes a cultural shift so vast that in the future, historians may divide time not between B.C. and A.D. but between the eras when people wrote letters and when they did not.”
Why? Because, “Historians depend on the written record.”
Another wonderful thing about letter writing is what it does for the letter writer. Jones uses Abraham Lincoln as an example. Jones writes, “Abraham Lincoln's speeches leave us in awe of the man. His letters make us like him, because we hear a more unburnished voice and more unbuttoned personality.
“Moreover, his correspondence proves that the more one writes—and Lincoln wrote a lot—the more relaxed the writer becomes, the more at ease he or she is in the act of writing and the more able to fully express thought and emotion.”
Think about the last time you received a personal letter -- think of how you felt. There must be someone in your life you can write letters to -- it is a very good thing. You can encourage them. You can share scripture. You can tell them you love them. And think of the letters that changed history -- the letters of the New Testament are what I think of. Where would be without them? Where would this world be without them?
God will use you in a letter. Your letters may well become keepsakes that are passed from generation to generation. You can do it! I know you can (and emails and texts don't count).