Friday Focus: Simple Actions

All too often when we run across injustices, particularly big ones, we freeze up with the enormity of it all.  We become convinced that there is nothing we can do so we end up doing nothing but stewing about it.  The first and foremost course of action for any Christian is: prayer.  Simple and simply world-changing.  Whether God answers your prayer by nudging someone else into action or showing you the way to take one step forward, one little kick at the darkness -- prayer is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal.  It calls up armies of angels, gathers the saints militant and triumphant for battle.  In the end, it is not simply our preparation for battle, it is the one field of battle into which every single Christian, no exceptions, is called.
But prayer often feels so nebulous to us, so ineffectual because we often do not see that answers come.  Particularly so when we are concerned about BIG issues like sex trafficking and abortion.  We want to DO SOMETHING, anything.  So often we comfort ourselves, in this age, with typing our names in a little box on a computer screen and think that signing a petition is doing something, because doing more seems so overwhelming and might call us to get our hands dirty.  In fact, I recently wrote a "note" on this for my FB page. 

There aren't many of us who could or should pick up sticks and go to work volunteering for IJM or World Vision or go to work at a Hamlin Fistula Hospital.  When we do this without the proper preparation we can end up hurting more than helping.  When this happens we can see that perhaps prayer really is our best weapon, prayer for guidance and direction.

So I think you already know today's assignment.  But for extra credit you can do something positive, a simple action to support a good piece of legislation.  Here is a link to an explanation about the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.  Here is the Senate website from which you can find the contact information for your two Senators.  Read the information on the IJM page and poke around a bit, checking some of the links which include a link to the full text of the bill.  Use their letter as a model for your own letter to your two Senators.  Then get in touch with your Senators, both of them.  Whether by phone call, personal email, postal letter or a face-to-face meeting the next time they are home.  Meeting with local staffers and leaving a letter for the Senator works as well.

It's a simple thing to make it personal. In the words of Bruce Cockburn, gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. Sometimes it takes an awful lot of kicking, but it starts with one kick at the darkness and one knock on the doors of Heaven.