We recently found one of our daughters crying in bed. She seemed fine the last we saw her before going upstairs, so this took us a bit off guard. In a home with four daughters there always seems to be something to cry about, but when she calmed enough to share with us what it was this time, we were shocked. Hitler. That's right, HITLER was on her mind, and apparently had been for the past several weeks. What?! She told us her class was doing a research project at school and each student could select any topic they wanted to learn more about.
The stories are often horrific, the statistics are daunting and the problem so massive that it's often hard to know what to do or where to begin. Yet, at the core of who we are as the Church, we believe that even in midst of the hard and the broken and the overwhelming there can be a hope and a truth is that far more compelling. That as the Church we have both the duty and privilege to speak on behalf of and stand for the sake of those who cannot speak and stand for themselves - because that is exactly what God has done for us through Jesus.
My brother-in-law and I live in the same town. Attend the same church. Eat at the same restaurants. Play on the same softball team and hang out at the same family functions. But aside from those things, we couldn't be more different. My career has mostly involved standing on stages speaking to audiences or sitting behind computer screens writing at coffee shops. His, on the other hand, has in large part been spent in helicopters, flying top-secret missions into parts of the world most of us have never heard of to train or protect us from dangers most of us were never even aware of.
