The Officer’s Blog
Major Drew McCombe talks about his beloved Chelsea Football Club and about making a difference.
Major Drew McCombe 
He says:
Our answers to questions reveal so much about ourselves – perhaps that is why Jesus used them so often in conversation with people in order to get to the real person inside. I read an article the other day based on the following question. I share that with you for your consideration.
Q: What does the man who has everything want?
A: He wants to make a difference.
At least, Roman Abramovich, the super-rich Russian owner of Chelsea Football Club, apparently does. His chief executive, Peter Kenyon, was reported in the Guardian as saying: ‘When we talked about “What do you want Chelsea to do? What is success?”, he said he wanted Chelsea to “make a difference”.’
It’s an intriguing response in the context. How do you make a difference through football? What is success, really? (And did Jose Mourinho leave the club because he hadn’t made a difference? Or the kind of difference Roman didn’t like?)
Abramovich’s words reflect one of the deeper longings we all feel – at some level or other to make a difference. Not just to go through the motions, even if we are ‘successful’ as we do so. Our motives may vary, of course: some may want to make a difference in order to feel wanted, or to be remembered after they’re gone; others may wish to change the world to suit themselves. But most of us, deep down, also want to make a difference for good.
The danger, perhaps, is that our dreams are too grand, or too abstract, and we fail to turn them into reality. Christians, for example, may talk (quite understandably) of wanting to see the country turn to God, of praying for world peace, of longing to make poverty history…
Perhaps the best place to start is by asking, more realistically: What difference do I make?
In one sense, whether we are a Russian billionaire or the man or woman who cleans his toilet, we can’t help but make a difference, whether positive or negative, just through being different. We are, after all, each unique. As Jesus said in Luke 6 (as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson), ‘It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts … The health of the apple tells the health of the tree.’
So, perhaps it’s less a case of dreaming abstractly of making a difference and more of making our actual difference count. Using it for the benefit of the kingdom of God, and to help others to celebrate their own uniqueness, their made-in-the-image-of-God-ness.
Followers of Jesus must believe they can make all the difference in the world. Followers of Chelsea, meanwhile, will just have to wait and see what difference Avrum Grant makes.