maybe it's best to assume people are doing their part

​I came upon these words yesterday a friend wrote in her blog a decade ago: "Instead of questioning how I can repair the world if everyone else isn't repairing it, I'm going to assume they are."

What struck me most about those words was the reality a dear friend was wrestling with things a decade ago I find myself wrestling with today. How do you change a world so many people seem disinterested in changing?

What on earth difference will doing my part make if no one else is going to do theirs?

With HER ten year old words, my friend Rebecca confronts the two errant ways of thinking in MY right now words.

First, it gets easy to believe that because someone isn't doing a part that looks like the part I think needs done - they aren't doing a part at all. Too often, I think, my idea of someone doing their part to change the world is built on my personal beliefs about what in the world needs changed.

But the reality is, if I opened up a survey for you all to provide me the top five things you think need changed in the world, our answers would all look different. None of us are going to agree on what changing the world looks like.

So maybe, instead of spending energy trying to force someone into changing the world the way I think it needs changed, maybe I am better served assuming they are finding their own way to repair it.

Because in the end, repairing the world isn't a task thing, it's a heart thing.

Tending to the poor isn't about giving someone shoes, it's about having a heart for the shoeless.

Helping an elderly person across the street isn't about giving someone a hand, it's about having a heart for the person who needs the hand.

Wanting to end racist practices in our country isn't about ending racism, it's about having a heart for the people who've been oppressed by those ongoing practices.

And so when repairing the world becomes a heart issue, doing our part requires all the heart we can bring to the repair. Do I want to pour my heart into making someone perform the repairs I think need done - at the risk we may never agree - or do I want to have available to me my whole heart for the repairs my heart is telling me need tended to.

Because in the end, what I really want isn't a world full of people changing the world. What I want is a world full of people with hearts full of wanting to help the people in it.

Sometimes, it's easy to start thinking that because we don't see the changes, there are no hearts.

The heart is a risky thing to start judging. Because if I'm wrong about it, the heart that gets damaged most is my own.

So from now on, when I find myself getting frustrated that someone isn't repairing the world, I'm just going to assume they are.

That - I think - is the healthiest thing for my heart's desire to repair the world.