Learn to do good. Seek justice.
How’s that for a call to action?
It’s clear, strong, unequivocal, and even comes with specific methods of engagement.
Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows. (Isaiah 1:17)
Learn. Seek. Help. Defend. Fight. It’s stuff we can do something about, right now, where we are, with what we have.
I wrote about this a while back. We’re revisiting as we examine the causes and organizations with which RICH’S RIDE partners.
# # #
There’s a famous account of a conversation between two business visionaries in which former PepsiCo CEO John Scully recounts Steve Jobs’s pitch to lure him to Apple. According to Scully, Jobs issued a challenge.
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
In the verse from Isaiah, God provides clear direction: Go and change the world!
If we take this call to action seriously, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Poverty, slavery, abuse, hunger, disease, clean water, violence, homelessness, education…the list seems endless. Nobody can effectively address every need.
Trying to do everything really means doing nothing.
If we wish to make a difference, we need to narrow the focus. How do you choose the “right” cause or organization?
There’s no single correct answer. You pray and listen to your heart and talk to people you trust. It’s important to investigate, but in the end you trust God to lead.
I believe what’s most important is to do something. Rather than waiting for the most worthy cause or the perfect organization, which simply don’t exist, pick a spot where you can use your gifts to serve.
Selecting one doesn’t mean rejecting others. Choosing is hard when everyone markets their cause effectively with pictures and videos of starving, abused children, filthy water, and wounded veterans. This world is broken and it’s not my job to fix it. God’s taking care of that, in His timing. I’m called to make a difference. I can only do what I can, where I am, with what I have.
My focus on human trafficking doesn’t indicate a lack of concern for hungry children or clean water. God understands.
God isn’t about guilt. He wants wise, prayerful selections, but mostly He wants us to serve with passion, freedom, and joy. So you choose as wisely as possible and trust Him to bless and multiply your efforts.
Seeking the “right” mission can create a sense of guilt that’s one of the enemy’s most powerful tools. Guilt splinters efforts and renders them ineffective. It steals the joy of serving. It can immobilize and prevent you from doing anything.
So when RICH’S RIDE chooses a particular cause and a partner, I’ll do my best to tell their story. I certainly want to increase your awareness; I never want to exert any hint of pressure or guilt to get involved financially.
What matters is that we all do something with our gifts and passions. We each need to answer Jesus’ challenge:
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life __________, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
Please leave a comment here.
