Showing Love With a Granola Bar...

Sometimes I get ahead of myself. Like just about any person in their early 20's staring down the lifetime ahead of them, I have one general goal for my life: change the world. What the hell does that even mean? What am I going to change? End all the wars? Feed all the people? Stop all the hate? Cure all the diseases? Seriously, there's a lot of stuff that needs changing.

I've come to realize that I will probably not do any of those things on any sort of global scale. What I'm coming to realize is that God really wants to use in a big way in little moments. Every day, I seem to be faced with moments to do something great. Most of the time, I lean towards apathy and fear.

Take this past week in Austin. I got out of the car at Ryan's house, and the guys from across the street yelled to us. My thought was to look distant, because I was distant. I really wanted nothing to do with these guys, and I had no idea who they were. I felt a small amount of shame at being so apathetic towards a couple of guys on the porch who were trying to be nice. Okay, fast forward 27 hours. It's 1 am the next night. We're locked out of Ryan's house, and Allen (one of the guys from the porch) comes across the street. He offers us a beer and a chair on his porch--we oblige. Well, we meet Roy (Allen's partner) when we walk up. The refer to themselves as Ryan's "gay pagan neighbors." Allen (who so far has proven himself to be one of the nicest people I've ever met) asks us if we're religious like the guys across the street (who he doesn't really know at all, he says). Adam and I were given a chance to be out-of-the-closet Christians to this gay couple. We didn't judge them. All we did was talk about art and music--we indirectly shared our faith (he asked where I work, which is indeed a church). We didn't do much for these guys except treat them like human beings and thank them for their kindness. I think God probably smiled. I talk a lot about loving the gay community, but this is probably the first time I've ever made good on those words.

I spent a week in Waco working with people in the inner city, and I think it really gave me insight to what it will be like when I live in a big city (i.e., Austin). There are homeless people all over Austin. If I were to give a couple of bucks to every person I saw, I'd be broke in a week. How can I help these people? Even I give a couple of bucks, many of these people are homeless due to addictions. I don't want to give someone 5 bucks to go towards booze or drugs. I had a simple thought the other day. What if I carried a box of those really awesome Wal-Mart brand granola bars? They cost like $1.50 for ten. In other words, for $.15, I can put a small amount of food in someone's stomach. It's not curing homelessness, but there are other means to that. It's providing about as much help as a couple of bucks does. In Fayetteville, it's been easy to pick up McDonald's or Arby's for someone standing near the bypass. Austin provides a much tougher situation. How do you give one person something when there's ten more standing next to him? I know a granola bar isn't much, but it doesn't take much to love.

My point is this: changing the world isn't some grand thing. Every time you do something little the world has changed. It won't get noticed on CNN, Bono won't give you a high-five, Oprah won't pretend to care about what you've done. Nonetheless, the world is different. It's better. I confess that I'm probably going to fail at this on a lot of occasions. I'll probably choose apathy over empathy. I'll probably just get used to seeing homeless men as I get on the bypass. I'll probably grow ignore the gay community rather than reach out to it. Hopefully, God will continuously break my heart for these men--homeless, gay, whatever. I pray that God would break my heart daily for those around me that don't know him. Maybe I won't see a giant revival in Austin. Maybe I won't see world peace. I just hope that I bring love and hope in a practical way wherever I go.