-Helen Keller
Today was a fun day.
It's been a good weekend...
but today was an especially fun day.
Many people have heard of Vivienne Harr and her lemonade stand, Make A Stand Lemonade. If you haven't, here is a quick introduction taken from her website (linked above):
To make that even more brief: She is an eight year old girl who, after hearing there are slaves in the world, decided to do something about it with what she had available to her; selling delicious, fair trade, organic lemonade to thirsty people in California.
This is what Not For Sale likes to call "Open Source Activism". It is when you take your skills and talents and put it into use to further the movement to end modern day slavery in our time. It's that whole "bloom where you're planted", or "do what you can, with what you have, where you are" idea....and I love it.
Let's take a moment to think about this, shall we....
I am a person. (And so are you...)
Not just any person, I am an awesome person.
God has created me.
He loves me (which is an absolutely mind-blowing, leave-me-speechless, I'm-in-awe idea).
He wants me to do amazing things.
He has given me a set of gifts and talents.
These talents He wants me to use.
He has a plan that directly involves me using those skills and talents.
He wants me to be His hands and feet on this earth.
What does that entail?
So many things.
One thing that comes to my mind:
“Learn to do good.
Seek Justice.
Help the oppressed.
Defend the cause of orphans.
Fight for the rights of widows”
- Isaiah 1:17
We put that all together and we a perfect recipe for creating unstoppable world change. We can empower ourselves and each other to pull a Gandhi and "be the change we wish to see in the world. " And not only be the change, but to see a radical change in the entire world that puts an end to injustice.
Can you imagine a world with no injustice? People living freely, able to fully provide for themselves and their family with dignity in their work, giving to others in a beautiful sense of community, loving each other and recognizing differences as strengths. These are lives of joy, these are lives of hope.
Make A Stand Lemonade and countless others are doing exactly what we should all be doing; doing what we can, with what we have, where we are. They are blooming where they are planted and the more they bloom, the more beautiful they, and the world around them, becomes.
I encourage each and every person to take a moment and reflect on who you are. What skills do you possess? What talents, what gifts? What can you do with those to help make the world a better place, to be the part of Christ's body that you have been appointed to be? (1 Corinthians 12) It would be so wonderful for you to reflect on what you can do, and then make a stand, and do it. You might feel inadequate, you might feel like it won't make a difference but it will, it really will. In the words of Mother Teresa, "If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one."
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
- Mother Teresa
OH - PS- One of the main reasons of this blog post, the reason today was so fun,
was that we got to meet Vivienne....
...she's a sweetheart.
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