Beyond Complacency to Making a Difference as a Christian

Let me take you back to a place in time we will not soon forget. Let us pretend for a minute that you are there, your family is there, and your home is there – everything you know and love – is there. You are sitting in scared silence, with your lights out and your blinds drawn – as if not to attract attention to yourself. You are a Jew and you are going to be killed. As you hear the screams of your neighbors and then the powerful gun shots getting closer and closer, you are thinking to yourself, “Why didn’t somebody do something?” Then the truck stops, the boots stomp, and the fists pound. Your father is grabbed violently and thrown from your apartment balcony, only to hit the cobblestone street three stories below a second later. A soldier pulls a gun out and your mother is shot, your brother is shot, your sister is shot, and then the gun turns to you. The trigger is pulled back, and it’s over.

To this day the question you asked is still pondered and pondered some more. In the mean time similar events still take place. Bombs still go off in Iraq, guns still kill in the Sudan, and our inner cities still continue to fall to despair and ruin. While most are left to ponder and perhaps revere in there wisdom of what someone could have done, a few are out there doing it. They are being that somebody and doing that something. They have defied the strongholds of complacency and apathy and stepped into the danger zone. They have heeded the call of their leader with utmost abandon and a strange delight, and there is no going back. Of course they fall and fail and when they are done failing, they fail again. But amongst the failure are the successes that make the pain of failure worth it all.

When you take a step back (assuming that we’ve stopped pretending) and examine this group, you realize that these people are just ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They are different from the rest because of one reason; they have stopped asking “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” and instead have asked themselves, “Why don’t I do something?” In so doing, they have become today’s heroes.

You ask them why and how they can do these things and they tell you something you’ve heard before, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” Then you make another realization - that you can and should do it too.

- Inspired by God, written by Joe