Just DO it

Ah, summer. The wisps of near hundred-degree days.

A woman at one of my churches yesterday, Miss Ruth, who is more than 100 years of age, talked to me a moment about how hot it was without even electric fans, much less air conditioning, when she was a child. I listened, thinking honestly that I can't compare that with what I feel when I go out right now.

The point is, I think, that comparisions of depths of struggle are not that good for any of us. Or are they?

Take, say, the poor in America and the poor in Africa. You want to say poor is poor, but it really isn't. Poor in Africa means 100 bucks a year in income and no mosquito net just to keep you kid from dying of malaria. We want to talk about poor, but we don't know poor.

How does one deal with all that? How does one deal with the fact that no matter what one does, it will never be enough?

I think all we can do, or perhaps better stated the best we can do, is to do what we can.

And there the comparison should stop. What I can do might be more than you can do which might be more than the other person can do. But the verb is present there for all of us. All of us must DO what we can.

Not talk it. Not think it. Not dream it.

Do what we can for all that we can in all the ways that we can.

A fine gentleman once said something close to that.