The man who loves to be a source of encouragement will first encourage the ones who are closest to him, then over time encourage the ones who are a little more distant. His life-giving, hand-raising, knee-strengthening words will begin to blaze a trail through this wearying life and others will follow in it. Others will imitate him, follow in his footsteps, and become encouragers themselves. His whole community will be blessed by his godliness because the whole community will come to be influenced by it.

My favorite cities to explore are the ones that have come together organically rather than according to a plan. Where some city centers were built on a grid with each building aligned closely with the road beside it and each street meeting the others at a perfect 90-degree angle, I prefer the cities that arose without such careful design. These are the cities where the streets wind and turn, where roads meet and cross one another at quirky angles, where creative traffic signals are needed to protect drivers and pedestrians from themselves.

Most of these cities had inauspicious beginnings. One person crossed an empty field to get from one place to another, then did so a second time and a third. Soon another person followed in his faint footsteps, then another and another. Gradually, over time, a track was worn. The track eventually became a path and then, as time passed and traffic grew, the path was widened to a road. As still more people passed that way, houses were built beside it and shops were founded to serve the passersby. A hamlet became a village became a town became a city. By then it was too late to create a grid, too late to follow a plan. The roadways had already been worn.

In much of life we build habits and patterns the way people build roads. Just as a man walks through a field, then finds that others are following in his footsteps and widening his trail to a roadway, a man may exhibit a kind of behavior, then repeat it in view of others, and find that they begin to imitate him. He learns, perhaps to his surprise, that a private behavior has become a public habit. He did not intend to be such an influencer, but inadvertently created the way in which others followed.

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