Lent 24

Micah 6:8 "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Without sharing the details...In a conversation today, I made a comment about addressing a specific problem not being enough because it would come up again so what is needed is an answer to the broader problem underneath the specific one.

One of the talks that I was impressed with this past weekend was the one entitled, "Change Your World." The speaker made the point that if we are to follow a biblical model, it is not enough to simply address a problem, but rather we must seek find the source of a problem to address that as well. An example: You meet a homeless person who asks for a warm meal. You have the resources to meet this need. Jesus said, "As you did for the least of these, you have done for me." You provide the meal. To truly do justice, however, it is important to seek to find the source of the problem. Perhaps you could go the next step by seeking to participate in programs which provide indigent mental illness support in order to address one of the many root causes of homelessness.

I pray to God each day for the strength to avoid the band-aids on bullet holes rut that we so often get stuck in. I will not disparage the band-aids completely though. While we seek to find solutions to systemic problems, we shouldn't ignore what little we can do. Sometimes we have to put food in bellies while we try to figure out why the food isn't there in the first place.