One Man Touches The Globe

Warning! Warning!

This post is just for my Christian friends!

Hang on, hang on. I was just piquing your interest. Because what ever faith you hold, there is a lesson in the story I am sharing on the power of one person. In fact, I'll be sharing several one person stories over the next month. Some will be very small and very personal, man on the street, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend while others like Ryan from Ryans Well and Blake MyCoskie from Tom's Shoes, whom I earlier drew attention to, will be big stories.

Stories of a movement sprung from one idea, one inspiration, one passion, one person.

'I Am Second' Evangelistic Campaign Touches Globe


By Adrienne S. Gaines

published in NewMan eMagazine

5/29/09 — A Texas Christian businessman has a simple plan for evangelizing his community: Lift Jesus up and let Him do the rest.

In December 2008, Norm Miller, CEO of Interstate Batteries, launched I Am Second, a three-year Dallas-area ad campaign that features both prominent and lesser-known Christians proclaiming that Christ is first in their lives. Its companion Web site features video testimonies from Christians ranging from actor Stephen Baldwin to former Korn guitarist Brian "Head" Welch to virtually unknown Dallas-area residents telling of how God changed their lives after they battled eating disorders, divorce, addiction or abuse.

In its first two months, the campaign generated 280 million impressions from billboards, print ads and TV commercials reaching the Dallas-Forth Worth community. Since it launched in December, IamSecond.com has logged 750,000 unique visitors from every state and 188 nations.

"The mandate was lift up Christ and He'll draw all men to himself, so all we've got to do is be concerned with the lifting," said Miller, who is investing $1 million a year in the campaign, which he formed in partnership with Dallas-based mission organization e3 Partners.

The site has drawn visitors from as far as China, and Welch's testimony has been posted on YouTube and subtitled in Russian and Italian. In recent months, ministry and Christian business leaders in Atlanta; New York City; Orlando, Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Tucson, Ariz., have expressed interest in taking the campaign to their cities. Similar requests have come from as far as Ireland, New Zealand and India.

"My heart was my Jerusalem, and I thought that this was possible, these other cities," Miller said. "But my thought was, There's plenty of people like me in these cities, and if God wants to do it, He'll raise them up. There's not a lack of money. There may be a lack of giving the money, but there's not a lack of people having the money."

Miller said the idea for I Am Second came to him in early 2008 when he was approaching his 70th birthday and began contemplating his legacy. "I started thinking about Dallas-Fort Worth and their need for a real encounter with the truth of Christ," Miller said. "I thought, Does that really need to be done? And I agreed that it did."

Campaign organizers said I Am Second can help Christians share their faith with unsaved co-workers or neighbors.
"It says in Ephesians that the purpose of the church, of the evangelists, and the teachers, and the preachers is for the equipping of the body to do the work of the ministry," said e3 Partners Vice President Nathan Sheets, who helped developed the I Am Second campaign. "And so we view this as a way to be able to strategically come in and help the church executive what's the mandate of the church, to be the church. It's been done so well, it emboldens Christians to want to be proud of it and to share it."

Sheets said the campaign was meant to make Jesus famous and embolden people to live for Christ. But he believes it also can help change negative perceptions about Christianity.

"I want to get away form the religious conversation," Sheets said. "We don't live authentic, transparent Christian lives, and people feel like we've got it all figured out and we don't ever do anything wrong, then we end up with people in media who are popular in Christendom that are no different than anybody else. We wind up with Christian marriages with a higher divorce rate than secular society. That perceptionally makes people go, ‘This is all fake.' Versus just saying: ‘I still struggle in my life ... but luckily Christ died for my sins and I'm forgiven and He can help change my heart and my life, so let's just do this thing together.'"

The I Am Second Web site includes links to small groups that meet in Dallas-area churches, businesses and homes. Miller said churches tell him the campaign's impact has been "tremendous."

"This is the part that takes faith," Miller said. "Normally ... I would want to know how many people you're going to have on the street, how many people you're going to talk to, how many people have come to Christ. I want to know the impact of the money, to be a good steward. But in this case Christ said, ‘Look, lift Me up, and I'll draw all men to Myself.' And I got a freedom out of that."

"I'm totally shocked at what's happened outside of Dallas-Fort Worth," Miller added. "But I'm content with what's happened inside Dallas-Forth Worth because we're only six months into a 36-month plan. I really believe God's going to do a lot more as time goes on because most efforts aren't that long. It's almost a dripping faucet. I gotta see what that site is, after a year and a half of seeing [the ads]. What is that? You might forget it after 90 days, but if you see something and you don't know what it is and you wonder then a year later you see it again, eventually you're going to say, ‘I'm going to find out what that is.' And that's what we're hoping. That's our prayer.

Ok, thats it. I have one simple question. What are you going to do before your next birthday??

My suggestion? Give yourself a present and Give!

Susan Boyle: Final Performance... Better Than the First!

What can I say but that Susan Boyle inspires me to dream! Not small dreams but big ones.

Many of you have commented to me via email and asked me to keep you up to date on Susan's progress and so I will keep that promise, but this is my last post on her. I do not want our focus to be on watching Susan live out her dreams and utilize her God given talents, but for her story to inspire you to live out yours.

I will keep this post short and let you enjoy her performance and I will follow up soon with some suggestions on how you can graft into daily life in a deep meaningful way. Maybe not as glamorous a way as Susan's, but using the right filter to view your passions, talents, position, responsibility and opportunity, you will be able make a difference in someone else's life and perhaps realize a purpose you have not yet discovered or fulfilled.

Eaar

Susan Boyle Strikes Again with "Memory"

It seems Susan Boyle was not a one hit wonder.

I have just finished watching her most recent performance on Britain’s Got Talent and she stole my heart once again. For those of you who read my previous post on Susan, I need not say more but simply offer you her most recent use of what is obviously God given talent. For those of you who did not read my post, I encourage you to go back and read it. It is in my April postings.

My point in drawing attention to Susan again, is not out of celebrity following, of which the world at large seems addicted to, but with the hope that one of you out there realizes there is a gift or talent or passion that God has uniquely given to you, that you are not yet using or using to it's fullest. No matter what stage of life you are in, there is a whole world out there you can touch. Oh, it may not be the whole world like Susan has. But it could mean the whole world, to someone you reach out to. A next door neighbor, a community far away in another part of the world, an estranged relative or friend, a child who needs a mentor.

And here's the deal, let it be something that stretches you, that scares you, makes you uncomfortable. Susan had this talent her whole life, yet she still felt she had to prove that she was "not the worthless person that people think I am, that I do have something to offer" and finally went for it all. I too had become too comfortable in life, a talent couch potato, letting my gifts and talents rust away and go unused. Have you become too comfortable, fallen into a routine? To quote Pastor Rick Warren, "God has a purpose for your life". My suggestion to you is, it is time to discover it. Let me know if you're not sure how to go about that. I am in the midst of that myself, and just like Susan Boyle, there are horizons beyond my vision, but I find it is a wonderful and exciting journey

I have begun!

What Can One Person Do?

I was sitting on the plane to Nairobi as I began writing this post, having left London in the morning and California the night before that. Lying wide awake in bed at the hotel that night thinking, still stuck on Pacific time I realized that one of the issues that I regularly confront as I speak to people about using their talents for good, is the feeling that one person can’t do much of anything. Or as a Pastor told my friend Bud Potter before we left on this trip. Aid to Africa is "like shooting darts at the moon".

Now, my seatmate for the flight to Nairobi is Tim who works for a NGO (non governmental organization) that is working globally on getting prescription medicines that we here in the west have access to such as AIDS and Malaria medicines, to the people who don’t have that access. Certainly a huge project. So perhaps many people think, we should leave helping others to govenment's or big NGO's like WorldVision or the Red Cross.

After all, realistically what can one person do to help the billions of people mired in poverty? What can one person do to help the global environment? What can one person do about the millions with AIDS in Africa or the millions of orphans that have been left behind? What can one person do to bring clean and safe water to the over 1 billion people who don't have it?

Think about it for a minute. Whats your answer to those questions? In fact personalize it. What could I do?

Do you feel defeated or feel energized? Apathetic or passionate?

Well, let me tell you how 2 people answered those questions and the results of their answers.

The first is a boy from Canada named Ryan Hreljac. In 1998, when Ryan was in first grade he learned from his teacher that people were dying because they didn't have clean water to drink. In his innocence as to the size of the problem around the world, he decided that raising money for people who didn't have clean water would be a good thing. He worked for four months in order to earn his first $70. Ryan’s first well was built in 1999 when Ryan was seven years-old at a school in a Ugandan village. The well continues to serve thousands of people.

Ryan’s determination grew from the $70 collected by doing simple household chores to a Foundation that today has contributed a total of 502 water and sanitation projects in 16 countries bringing clean water and sanitation services to over 621,712 people. The Foundation has raised millions of dollars and Ryan is still only 16 years old. Here is their website: www.ryanswell.ca




My second person is Blake Mycoskie, a fellow blogger and founder of TOMS Shoes. In 2006 while traveling in South America, Blake befriended children in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Most children in developing countries grow up barefoot. Whether at play, doing chores or just getting around, these children are at risk.

Wearing shoes prevents feet from getting cuts and sores from contaminated soil. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected. The leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted parasites which penetrate the skin through open sores. Wearing shoes can prevent this and the risk of amputation.

Also, many times children can't attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don't have shoes, they don't go to school and if they don't receive an education, they don't have the opportunity to realize their potential.

Wanting to help, Blake created a company that would match every pair of shoes sold with a pair given to a child in need. One for One. A simple, yet bold idea. Well, Blake returned to Argentina with a group of family, friends and staff later that year with 10,000 pairs of shoes to be given away.

Since then, TOMS has given over 140,000 pairs of shoes to children in need through that One for One model. TOMS plans to give over 300,000 pairs of shoes to children in need around the world in 2009. Want to order a pair? Go to the TOMS website. Here is a 2 minute video from one of their Shoe Drops to the needy.




Now biblically speaking its clear one person can and should do a lot. Lets take a moment to look at Jesus Christ’s own ministry. Yes, he did die on the cross to save humanity. That certainly was global and beyond anything we can do. But if you look at his daily ministry you’ll find it was directed at individuals. He did not raise thousands of people from the dead in some mass setting, but a very elect few. When he healed he didn’t make some proclamation over a whole city that every sick person be healed, but dealt with people one at a time, as individuals. In fact each one was even healed in a somewhat different way. The blind man by the mud Jesus made with His spit, the crazy man at the cemetery by casting out demons and the woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years, simply through the touch of his garment.

Even when He preached to thousands such as the Sermon on the Mount, he spoke to people about the things they could and should do as individuals. When He said the greatest commandments were to Love the Lord God with all your heart mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. He didn’t say love your neighbor’s, but neighbor.

How does all this relate to my current trip? Well, my friend Bud and I are on our way back to Rionchogu, a village of about 7,000 people in the equatorial highlands of western Kenya. The organization I serve with Go and Do Likewise is a loose assortment of few people. Now you might wonder what can a few people do to help 7,000. One heck of a lot actually. It’s simply a matter of commitment, purpose, and passion. Here is an update from the trip:
www.goanddolikewise.org

Commitment. When you are able, do more than just write a check, though I thank those who can do just that. In these tough economic times its needed. In fact if you can help with the work we are doing in Kenya, go here to GAD Kenya to make a donation. But I hope you'll consider seriously making a commitment to be willing to be changed through the connection with those you help. You see when we only write a check, it is a one-way transaction. The money flows from one person to another and its possible you might not be changed in return. What I am now looking for are the two-way transactions, where the people we give to, change us as much or more than the ways that we change their lives. I am sure if you asked Ryan or Blake they would tell you they have been changed, in ways they never could have imagined.

Purpose. If in self reflection your purpose has been to just feel better about your self, it probably won’t last. I have supported a World Vision child in Malawi for 10 years now. Jumani is his name and he is almost grown up and ready to take on the world. I do feel good about that, and the work World Vision is doing is fantastic, but I also realized last year that in a way my $30 a month was simply a guilt offering, to make me feel better every time I saw a picture of starving children in Africa or Mexico, etc. For me, it was a one way transaction, because it didn’t really change me. Oh it could have, had I allowed it. Had I become more involved in Jumani’s life beyond writing the check. Rionchogu, "a village despised" and the people there has changed me. In fact, this blog itself, was ignited by my experiences of my first trip there.

Passion. Having been young once, married more than once and deeply in love with my wife Suzanne, I have many wonderful memories of pursuing the woman I loved with passion. Do you recall similar memories? Is there anything else in your life where you exhibit that kind of passion? Perhaps a hobby or sport? I sure "love" my Angels baseball team and watch or listen to every game I can. What if you had that kind of passion to help others? What would that look like for you? Where does that passion come from? How do you find it within you? How do you get there if you're not there?

I'd love to hear your answers to those questions? Leave me a comment on the blog or if you're shy send me an email and I'll report back what I hear. And please share my blog with others. We're up to 93 readers from 10 different countries, 10 different states in the US and 33 different cities in California. Who knows, maybe the next Ryans Well or TOMS Shoes will spring from us? Wouldn't that be cool?

Eaar

An Athiest Says Africa Needs God! Huh?

I have been studying quite abit about aid to Africa lately, in relationship to the work Go and Do Likewise is doing via GADKenya in Rionchogu, Kenya. On the flight to Nairobi last month I read "Dead Aid" a book by Dambisa Moyo that has garnered lot's of press and controversy worldwide. She argues that 5 decades and a trillion dollars of government to government aid to Africa has made the poverty related problems there worse rather than better and created nations who are now dependent on aid instead of becoming self sustaining. I agree in principle, and I have been wondering how does that relate to aid in smaller models such as the work we are attempting in the village of Rionchogu, population 7,000. A worthy discussion I hope to participate in. But, as I was doing my research I came across an article the title of which both surprised me and stopped me cold.

As a Christian, I am driven by Jesus Christ's clear commands to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. But, I also freely admit the obvious, that there are many secular and other faith organizations who are doing wonderful work helping others in the world for reasons of their own. Still, I was caught off guard by this article by Matthew Parris (an atheist) I have copied below regarding aid to Africa.

A recipient of local aid in Rionchogu

From the London Times December 2008

"As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

by Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete."

So Dambisa, or anyone else, wanna weigh in on this?

Eaar

P.S. If you are interested from my last post, Susan Boyle has got some competition, talent wise at least, from a 12 year old!

Susan Boyle: Did You Pre-Judge Her Too? I Did.

Ok, you've probably already seen the video on TV or the internet and heard commentary on Susan Boyle, who blew away the audience and judges on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent" which is similar to American Idol and also has Simon Cowell as one of the judges.

If you haven't yet read about the 47 year old unemployed church choir volunteer, who's never been kissed and who took a chance on being embarrassed in front of millions in an effort to live her dream. Well, live it she did.

I could spend hours trying to write my own post on this, but this article in the Britain's "The Herald" newspaper by Colette Douglas Home says it better than I ever could.

"The moment the reality show’s audience and judging panel saw the small, shy, middle-aged woman, they started to smirk. When she said she wanted a professional singing career to equal that of Elaine Paige, the camera showed audience members rolling their eyes in disbelief. They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she’d reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn’t had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon. But why? ..... (Click here to read the rest of the article).

Oh, you're one of the few that still haven't seen the video, or now that you've read the background, you want to watch it again? Here you go, soften your heart, grab your kleenex and be ready to cheer!



Susan reminds me in some ways of my 17 year old daughter Caitlin. Also, a special needs child as Susan was, Catie works hard at all that she does, she must, she has no other choice. Things that are easy for the rest of us, such as reading and comprehension, are for her, so very hard. She loves Broadway plays like Susan, such as Wicked (she has seen it 5 times), Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, which Susan sings her song "I Dreamed a Dream" from. And she often dreams dreams, that I, in my practical sense deem unrealistic for her life.

Susan Boyle has shown me that I am the one who has who has been limited in my thinking. I am the one who has judged incorrectly. I am the one who judged prematurely, as I did when I started watching Susan's appearance. I thought this was another poor soul about to be laughed at by millions, unaware how foolish she looked. But it was I who was the foolish one.

A lesson pointed out thousands of years ago in the Bible:

1 Samuel 16:7:

⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

And what springs from the heart are hopes and dreams. So how about you, do you have a dream? Are you perhaps now willing to Take A Chance? If so, let me hear about it, if you dare. Susan dared!

Eaar

TAKE A CHANCE

There have been many times in my life I have used people to get what I wanted out of life. Many of those times I didn’t always have enough self-awareness to know, that that was what I was doing. I never forced anyone to do anything, but certainly took advantage of relationships, friendships and manipulated circumstances to my advantage.

I speak of this not as some confessional, as I have done that and will gladly do again when called for. It’s just that I have come to realize how much I still do it and how much we all do it. That is, use others rather than love others. Even when I do good things for other people I know, sometimes, if not all the time I do it for my own selfish reasons. Wanting to feel good about myself for example or satisfying some obligation I feel or doing a favor to gain a favor or gain influence.

The trip I am now on my way back from, to Kenya once more, for me has been exhausting, even grueling, both physically and emotionally. A nine day trip, close to 20,000 miles round trip, 40 hours on 4 different flights, 3 days of all day driving in a Land Rover over the terrible dirt roads in Kenya, being thrown about like a pinball machine.

Now please, I am not trying to impress anyone or seek sympathy. Been there, done that. It is just that there were times during this trip when I was missing my wife and family, when I was exhausted, dirty, worn out emotionally, knowing tomorrow would involve more of the same, that I couldn’t help but feel discouraged, couldn’t help but wonder why in the blazes I was doing this, because now there wasn’t anything in it for me. The excitement of going to Africa had worn off with last years trip, the “cool factor” of doing missionary work was gone and any obligation I may have had was paid.

Then finally in my loneliness, though surrounded by scores of grateful villagers, I realized that for perhaps the 1st time in my life I was doing something that cost me, without the need for anything in return. It’s not that I didn’t get thanks and love from the villagers. It’s just that I didn’t need it or require it to go on doing what I was doing.

That hasn’t brought me great joy, like I have somehow achieved something or had some spectacular epiphany. Instead, as I write this on the plane back home, tears are falling. I am not sure why, perhaps something inside of me that was broken has healed or perhaps the reverse, something inside of me that needed to be broken has, finally, so that the healing can begin.

So, if this is not a confessional, what is in this post for you?

Please, take a chance. Take a chance to love someone in spite of the love returned. I don’t mean romantic love but agape love: unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, voluntary, volitional.

Examine your motives. I assure you if you are truly honest with yourself, you will find even in your most altruistic moments you are meeting your own selfish needs. Somehow validating your own perceptions of yourself, of right and wrong, good and bad, love and hate.

So take a chance, love without conditions, give without thanks. It will cost you. I repeat. It will cost you. But here’s the rub. You will be changed. I guarantee it.

So, take a chance! Give up your comfort, your wealth, your own happiness for a moment. For the cause of lessening someone else's discomfort, their loneliness, their poverty, their shame. I can’t tell you what to do. You’ll know the moment if you look for it. Not as some assignment or stunt. Not just to prove me right or wrong. Do it for real, roll the dice, take a risk, take a chance.

Eaar