Do you sometimes feel paralyzed by too many pressing demands?  Do the world’s tragedies sometimes overwhelm you with news of famines, floods, and despotism?

Elisa Morgan, former CEO of Mothers of Preschoolers, recently addressed these questions.  As the leader of a young mothers group, she understands the frustration of having seemingly infinite demands that overwhelm limited available time.

With a mother’s heart, Morgan also understands the longing to relieve pain and injustice around us while struggling to find time even to take a daily shower.

We want to focus on first-order priorities, but mindless logistics and pedestrian issues crowd out the things that matter to us. Life needs a spam filter.

Morgan’s booklet, She Did What She Could, reflects on a familiar story from the Bible and offers new insight on five simple words of Jesus.

Jesus and his disciples were talking over dinner when a woman approached him with an alabaster jar of costly perfume, probably her dowry.

She broke open the jar and anointed Jesus with the perfume.  Judas objected to her profligacy: Why wasn’t the perfume sold and the money given to the poor?  Other disciples piled on with more criticism.

Jesus rebuked them. You have the poor with you always, he said, but his time on earth was limited.  “She did what she could,” Jesus said.

Jesus praised the woman for what she did, Morgan points out, not what the woman could have done.  Nor did Christ say that she should have done more.  He just praised her for what she did.

She did what she could.  Morgan focuses our attention on those five words.

Jesus honored the woman for doing what she could.

You might not transform the world overnight, or even over a lifetime.  But you don’t need to transform the world.

Just do what you can.