Man's way leads to a hopeless end! God's way leads to an endless hope

"My friend Andrew the Protester believes things. Andrew goes to protests where he gets pepper-sprayed, and he does it because he believes in being a voice of change. My Republican friends get frustated when I paint Andrew as a hero, but I like Andrew because he actually believes things that cost him something. ..What I believe is not what I say I believe, what I believe is what I do." BlueLikeJazz, pg.110.

I have a story while working with people in my neighborhood. Part of my job is talking with them about their concerns and motivate them to be neighborhood leaders, by working together with other residents to solve problems or to achieve goals to create a better neighborhood. My neighborhood consists of hard-working families who has been living in the area for more than 40 years. Most of the older generations I've talked with, surprisingly, worship God.

When it comes of solving real problems, what do we do as followers of Jesus? I think it would be so naive to just pray without doing anything, or pray that our government will always do the right thing.

The answers that I sometimes heard were: that God will solve every problem, and we just have to pray about it; that we don't have to do anything other than praying. I can't argue that hold the authority to make things happen, but I also believe that someone need to do the work; that God makes thing happen by using living creatures like us.

God helps people who help themselves, right? Sometimes, the city forgot to patch back a pot-hole because there are so many holes to fill they only have so many workers. Sometimes, residents need to be persistent to remind people who hold authorities that, "hello, yes, our neighborhood exists and we pay our taxes too. Please fix this and remove that." Or sometimes, we need to let the congress know that our children have loss so many jobs in the summer and they need somewhere else to work or else they will end up finding other things to do on the streets.

My motivation to do what I do is almost the same as Andrew the Protester in BlueLikeJazz. One time, in our national coalition, we asked for a meeting with the BusinessRoundTable in Washington DC to talk with us about the new NoChildLeftBehind initiative that we thought would reduce a big portion of funding for our children in their school. Communication is very important, and a meeting is a way to talk to view our concern otherwise they would never know what we, the people, know and hear. We didn't do anything violence, we sang a song about love, and all we want is a meeting. Our coalition has been doing this for more than 34 years, annually, and, prior to the protest, we prayed (this is one thing that I was surprised with but I am glad. I felt the present of God in the room, it was very emotional, and it changed my point of view of the entire conference).

If God was there, there's nothing I doubt about it. God help people who help themselves.