Do Something!

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.  He said to them, "It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers."  Matthew 21:12-13

I recently heard that there was a longer version to “The Serenity Prayer” than the one you usually hear and I was curious about it, so I looked for it on the internet.  Well, I found it, but I was slightly surprised and disturbed by it:

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the

serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
taking this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right

if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

(by Reinhold Niebuhr)

The part that disturbs me is the part that I have bolded, “taking this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it”.  It is my impression that the author wants us to relax, accept life, and not get upset by it.  However, I have to disagree with him!  I admit that I am idealistic and am a dreamer and that I want things to be better than they are!  I usually don’t like it when someone says to me, “that’s just the way things are”!   I don’t mean to speak for Jesus, or put words into His mouth, but if you look at the above Scripture, it’s pretty clear to me that He just didn’t sit back and accept things.  If He saw that something was wrong, He did something about it!  And of course He was always confronting the Pharisees and Sadducees about their behavior:

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”  Matthew 23:13-15

I’m not suggesting that you should start overturning tables or calling people hypocrites.  However, there are a lot of things that you can do.

Here are some other quotes that say the same thing:

“One person can make a difference and every person must try.” By John F. Kennedy

“How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment: we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make a contribution toward introducing justice straightaway!”   By Anne Frank  

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.” By Sydney Smith  

(http://www.dailycelebrations.com/newsletter/14makingadifference.htm)

When you find something that you think is “wrong” or unfair, do something about it! Or if you see something that needs to be done, do it!  Don’t wait for someone else to do it!  We can all make a positive difference in our world!

Dear God,

Thank You for Your many blessings!!!  Help me to make a positive difference in this world!!!  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen