How do you change the world?
 
First of all, you have to believe it needs to be changed. Take what happened in Galveston, TX almost two weeks ago. Was that right? Did those people "get what was coming to them"? Some people are content (or maybe complacent) with the way things are.  For some depraved reason, they believe that our current state of affairs (suffering, disaster, hunger, poverty) is "as good as it gets." I don't know exactly how all that works out in the end, but I can't shake this feeling that things just aren't how they should be.
 
Second, you have to believe that it can be changed. If something needs to be changed, but can't, then what's the point of trying?
 
Lastly, you have to care enough to act. Believing that something needs to be changed and even that it can be changed isn't enough to actually change it. A lot of people quote Gandhi and say, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," or some paraphrase of that. However, I prefer what Ernesto Guevara says in the Motorcycle Diaries: "Let the world change you, and you can change the world."

There is a wonderful scene towards the end of the movie that depicts what is required to see such change occur. Ernesto spends three weeks working in a leper colony in Peru. He has touched those whom society has rejected, and it has changed his perspective on life and humanity forever.

The last night in the colony, he decides to swim across the river that separates the doctors from the lepers, despite his asthma, to celebrate with his new friends. He nearly drowns, but he makes it to the other side and spends the rest of the evening with the lepers. Regardless of what can be said about Guevara's actions later in life, it is clear from this scene that one thing is true: he let the world change him, and he changed the world. He touched the unlovely and somehow grew to love them.
 
Lately, I've heard a lot about what's been going on in Galveston, Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. People's homes are destroyed, city buildings are ruined, the port has to be rebuilt, and some insurance companies aren't paying out or are raising their deductibles.

As with Katrina, there are lots of lessons to be learned from this; however, I don't want the economics or politics of the matter to harden my heart so much that I forget that these are people's homes we're talking about.
 
I don't want to forget that this pile of rubble you see in a picture was some kid's tree fort or a little girl's playhouse. I don't want to forget that those who have lost everything still have dignity - inherent self-worth - and deserve to not be forgotten.
 
I want to be willing to swim across a river just to touch them.

I've always said that change starts with the individual. One of our guys on the ground in Texas gave this brief report earlier this week: "The area of damage is very widespread; the storm was 600 miles across... The immediate need is for volunteers, yesterday!" Currently, we're partnering with a church in Houston who is housing and and feeding any mission teams who want to go and extend a hand of hope to their neighbor.

You and I can do something about Ike. We can send more than our money; we can send ourselves. (An aside: I just got a note on Facebook from an old camp buddy who wrote me this: "How fast can we jump onboard? Could we be there next week?" That's the kind of activism in the Body I'm longing to see!)