You Don’t Need A Passport To Make A Difference

You Don’t Need a Passport to Make a Difference

O LORD, hear my plea for justice. Listen to my cry for help. Pay attention to my prayer, for it comes from honest lips. Declare me innocent, for you see those who do right. Psalm 17:1-2

I probably should stop doing it so much, since too often the result is the same. When I read the newspaper in the morning, it makes me angry. It’s hard for me to believe what people are capable of doing to each other or even worse, to children. And then there’s the people around the globe who eke out a meager existence with backbreaking work and live in deplorable conditions—well, it’s hard for me to even imagine.

We caught a glimpse of that several years ago when we traveled to South Africa to visit our daughter Tiara, who was in graduate school in Johannesburg. There we were introduced to squatter villages, where the landscape was filled with houses made of corrugated cardboard and tin. It was certainly sobering, but as much as I support short-term mission trips or long-term ministries to third world countries, we don’t have to travel halfway around the globe to find areas of need. Most of us can find plenty of hurting people right in our local communities.

Where do we begin to make a difference in the heartache all around us? Perhaps here: let us be instruments of God’s justice on earth. How? Where do we start when faced with a world in such need? Start where we are.

Perhaps you can do something to help young children in the community where you live. There are children who go to bed hungry, afraid, and abused not too far from your front door. Volunteer to be a guardian ad litem for abused and neglected children at the local courthouse. They could use an advocate speaking out on their behalf and in their best interests.

Find the nearest children’s home where you can help. There are a number of denominations that have developed and operate homes where disenfranchised children live and learn and heal from difficult home environments where they have been neglected, abused, or abandoned. They could use your help.

Locate a spouse abuse center where abused spouses and their children can find a safe and secure place to heal and get their lives together.

There are many things you can do that may make reading the morning newspaper a little easier. And maybe what you do will help change the headlines.

Uncommon Key > You can make a difference in this world right where you are. Find a place where you can plug in and help.