Be a difference maker in your community. Perhaps it’s easier said than done, but we believe if every person would set out each day to try to make a difference in the life of someone else, the positive changes we would see would be amazing.

To do it, though, requires setting aside our prejudices, our anger and our distrust of people and allowing our love for our fellow man to be our guide.

Love, you see, is the difference maker.

A recent devotion found online offers the example, as it delves into the possible chances boys growing up in the slums of Baltimore, Maryland have to succeed in life?

It goes like this:

A college professor had his sociology class go into the Baltimore slums to get case histories of 200 young boys. The students were asked to write an evaluation of each boy’s future. In every case the students wrote, “He hasn’t got a chance.” Twenty-five years later another sociology professor came across the earlier study. He had his students follow up on the project to see what had happened to these boys. With the exception of 20 boys who had moved away or died, the students learned that 176 of the remaining 180 had achieved extraordinarily success as lawyers, doctors and businessmen.

The professor was astounded and decided to pursue the matter further. Fortunately, all the men were in the area and he was able to ask each one, “How do you account for your success?” In each case the reply came with feeling, “There was a teacher.”

That teacher was still alive, so he sought her out and asked the elderly but still alert woman what magic formula she had used to pull these boys out of the slums into successful achievement.

The teacher’s eyes sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “I loved those boys.”

No wonder those boys succeeded. Their teacher loved them.

Love is powerful. If you love others, you can be a powerful influence in their lives, for good.

While the setting for this example was the slums of Baltimore, it could just as easily be the poorer sections of Sampson County, places where many children are raised in single parent homes or by grandchildren or aunts or uncles; where drug deals go on just outside the front door or perhaps on the front porch; where children, particularly young, black males, have few role models in their homes or neighborhoods; where crime is often second nature and where food is often hard to come by.

Many of us would perhaps say that those growing up in similar circumstances have no chance of success.

We would beg to differ. They have every chance to succeed if they, like those young men from Baltimore, find someone willing to love them. Perhaps it will be a teacher, perhaps a minister … perhaps it could be you.

If we want our county to be the best it can be; if we want children from every walk of life and every race to grow up successful; if we want to see positive differences made, then it must start with us and it must start with us offering love.

It’s just that simple.

So won’t you be a difference maker today? Won’t you be willing to share your love with someone who needs it? What you are willing to do could change a life and change the world.