Known by Our Deeds

It's fairly safe to say that most people, regardless of their religious identity, agree that helping people in need is a good thing. That's a broad statement, I know, but as it gets narrower we lose people.

Having compassion on the kid from Ecuador that you sponsor for $36/month is natural, even expected. Who wouldn't? God loves the poor, and we should as well.

Having compassion for your annoying, lonely neighbor or that awful internet troll is a different story.

Jesus, of course, said it the most succinctly when he said, "You have heard it said, 'love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

This is where we lose people. So we zoom out to the world and its many problems.

We are all fortunate-in a manner of speaking-to live in a time when a person can take up any cause that suits their passion: education. homelessness. slavery. racism. pornography. the environment. sex trafficking. poverty. Now more than in the last 30 years people want to talk about issues and justice, and many of them want to take action.

At church we speak often on getting involved in our community. I believe that anyone doing good for another person is worthwhile; even more, the effort towards sharing hope with the hurting can cause ripples of positivity that can change a community.

What stops us? Two roadblocks come to mind.

We are overwhelmed with the sheer need. Sending a box of clothes to an orphanage in Central America seems a drop in the bucket. You clothed 15. What about the other 300,000?

The other thing is cynicism, which stems from the realistic opinion that we can only do so much.

Over the summer I saw an Instagram post that featured a brilliant quote from a speaker at a conference about the refugee crisis. Under the caption the first commenter said:

I'm sure everyone applauds then goes on with their lives after this conference is over.

Listen. This guy isn't wrong. We do go to camp or a conference and hear a great speaker; we immediately commit to read the Bible in a year or feed the homeless, and often those moments fall away.

Does that make those moments worthless?

Is the 3 months you read the Bible every day until you got bogged down in Song of Solomon wasted?
Is the way God touched 1,000 people at a conference for naught? And if only 100 of them manage to do something for the world, does that truth somehow reduce or devalue the cause?

May it never be.

If anything, it's a reminder that humans suck without God's help. But be cheered: God is fully available to empower us to get involved in our neighborhood, our schools, our community, our country, and our world. He is able to help us not suck, and what's better, he is able to empower us to do amazing things to help the least of these.

One of my favorite organizations is the Preemptive Love Coalition. Read all about their mission here. Over the summer they used social media to ask for $35 donations to get much needed food and water to people trapped behind Isis lines in the city of Fallulah, Iraq.

People could have exercised their healthy cynicism like the fellow on Instagram. They could have said things like:

"there are so many other people to help."

Or, "why can't we help people in our own country?"

Or, "We still can't stop Isis this way."


And these thoughts, they may hold some truth. But luckily, thousands people did say:

"my $35 can do something for someone."

And, "the cause is just no matter how hard the climb."

And, "I will do my part to strike a blow against evil."

So what happened was this: hundreds of people with no hope received food, water, and the knowledge that they matter to folks in the United States; people that refused to be lazy or let glossy cynicism stand in the way of action.

We are in living in an age of action. Words and knowledge, so important in the forming of modern Christianity, matter less now in the face of a hurting world. Now more than ever, God's people need to be known by their deeds. All of us can carve out extra time or money to share, and even if it's a drop in a bucket, the person in the bucket is thankful.