Like nearly everyone else, I remember where I was.
No compelling story. No personal connection to the towers or planes. Just a Tuesday with kids in Room 5.
More than where, though, I recall the feeling of helplessness as I learned the horrific details.
An old wheelchair guy couldn’t rush out and enlist, couldn’t go to Ground Zero. I couldn’t “do” any of the things people did to work out their grief.
It felt like all I could do was…nothing.
We spend a lot of our lives feeling like that. You don’t have to be in a wheelchair to get the sense there’s nothing you can do.
It’s a lie.
Jesus asks us to do what we can, where we are, with what we have (WWC WWA WWWH) – and trust Him for the outcome.
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The world isn’t ours to control. That was never part of the deal. We tend to break the deal in two ways.
We don’t trust Him for the outcome. We get angry and frustrated when He doesn’t do things our way, on our schedule. So we rush in and break stuff, resort to physical and emotional violence in the name of peace, because the end justifies the means.
We seek short-term solutions to long-term problems and wonder why it never seems to work.
We decide there’s nothing we can do. If we can’t end the problem (or at least have the biggest, flashiest, most successful non-profit) why bother?
We’re all given gifts, and the whole point of a gift is to share it. Jesus doesn’t ask us to fix the world, but to use our gifts to care for those who struggle.
We can all do WWC WWA WWWH, to seek justice. We can do our part to set things right for the marginalized.
Jesus walked around for three years with a ragtag group of friends. He mostly talked to people individually and in small groups.
“Follow Me.”
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More next time.