If you listen to a news broadcast or have a good long read
through the newspaper, the road to peace, hope and possibility
on this planet appears to be a vertical climb. The terrain is
daunting and overwhelming.
It's much easier to ignore the hurt and the hunger, the pain
and the fear, the hatred and the horrors, than to deal with them.
Or is it?
It's easy if you stick your head in a hole in the ground and
refuse to look at what's happening around you. Easy, that
is, if you're happy eating topsoil every day of your life.
Simply acknowledging the injustices against humanity that
occur every second of every day, is tough. If you own up to
that knowledge, you take on the responsibility of finding a
way to stop it. If you do nothing, if you look away, if you
allow it to continue, you own part of the reason for its
existence. That's heavy duty stuff!
But how do you, or I, or any one person take on such a
Herculean task and expect to make a real difference?
You can't change the world without first changing yourself.
You can open your heart and let it ache for something that
has nothing to do with your own life, or for a person who
doesn't even know you exist. You can round up your own
fears and biases and banish them from your soul.
Let the Holy Spirit guide your internal peace and give
you the strength to bring it out in to the light of day
through the words you speak. My next conversation
about why I don't laugh at racial jokes and how I explain
why I'm not laughing when I hear one, and your next
conversation about how you buy an extra tin of
vegetables every time you go to the grocery store, then
drop them off at the Downtown Mission when you have a
full box, are two conversations that will make a difference.
The courage of your convictions will empower others to put
away their fears and move past their bias and prejudice.
Change yourself and you change the world.
Find your peace and pass it on.
