Dry some tears in 2015

As we end another year, my 61st and my dog Logan's 14th (and we're both showing a lot of wear and tear), I thought it best to reflect a minute.

Facebook has been kind enough to give us a look back, often without much of our intention. I noticed on my look back, taken from photos I posted (I guess) on Facebook, most of my year was devoted to grandkids. Well, so be it

But there is more to life than our own, isn't there? Shouldn't there be? What difference did any of us make this year?

I helped in a church restart that is on its infant legs. It's not even a toddler yet, and the legs are weak. It's going to take a mountain of prayer, an ocean of effort, and a Savior to give this baby a chance to walk one day.

I left a church, churches really that are in pain as are many in this country today. I feel for them even as I wonder about the future of the one I am in.

Where are the difference makers? Where are the ones who care more about the other than the self? Where are the ones who will make a change for the good of all? Where are we?

I believe all this, the shrinking of church attendance, the failure of churches on a weekly basis, begins and perhaps ends with our children and our children's children. If they have no reason to attend church, and even those two words make me cringe, then why would they this day?

Perhaps if they know how much we truly care, they will.

Pope Francis said this before Christmas: "My thoughts go out to all children today who are killed and mistreated, be it those even before they are born who are deprived of the generous love of their parents and buried in the egoism of a culture that does not love life. Also those children who are displaced because of wars and persecutions, abused and exploited before our eyes and with our silent complicity, children massacred under bombings even where the Son of God was born. Today their helpless silence cries out under the sword of many Herods. There are many tears this Christmas with the tears of baby Jesus."

Perhaps if we begin to dry the many tears, things will change. Let's make a pact together that we will feed some who are hungry, clothe some who are bare, house some who are homeless and simply dry those tears in each and every way we can.

Then we can worry together about church attendance. I suspect it won't matter.