I think we all need inspiration.  Paul says we ought not “grow weary in doing good” (Galatians 6:9) but even the most stout-hearted of us grows discouraged when we can’t see either the fruit of our labors or the goal in mind.  I’ve found it’s not so much new information I am looking for, but examples of lives applying the information I already have in passionate, beautiful ways.

My first source of inspiration: Paul Farmer.  Dr. Farmer works in Haiti among the desperate poor providing top-notch medical care, witty humor, and a contagious love.   He has my favorite of all heroic virtues: imperfection.  In this case I mean he sometimes uses harsh language, loses his temper and he has been known to “borrow” medical equipment for long periods of time without permission.  BUT, as that great philosopher theologian Bill Clinton once said: “It is hard to argue with a life so well lived.”

I highly recommend Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains.  You can get it used for a penny on Amazon.com (plus $3.99 shipping) or maybe free from me if you ask (it’s that good, I consider it an investment).  Two things about his life stand out:

1.  He has done something great by doing many small things with great love.  Every patient is his only patient.  He refuses to treat people like statistics.

2.  He is proof that loving your neighbor as yourself is far more difficult and wonderful than most of us have imagined.

To me, his life is an invitation to “join the losers.”  An invitation oddly familiar: “the last will be first…”

My second source of inspiration: Albert Schweitzer.  I am troubled to find most of my heroes are dead.  I often wonder if the last few generations (my own included) just aren’t producing many lives worthy of imitation.  But it may also be that such people are so engaged in doing good, that they find less time to write books about it.  Schweitzer starts his book The Primeval Forest with a gentle indictment to those of us who, as J*sus would say, “have been given much.”  One of the greatest sources of discouragement in my life is that plain things are no longer plain things.  If you get a chance, sit down and read Luke 16:19-31.  Not exactly encouraging, but here is what I like from Schweitzer:

He almost never mentions feeling “called” by G*d. What moved Schweitzer to Africa as a m*ss*onary doctor was conviction, not a call.

I am timid by nature and that frustrates me.  But G*d invites us to run, and rid ourselves from things that entangle (Hebrews 12).  Perhaps what most of us need is not a special call, but conviction.  A simple conviction about what is good and right and true and lovely and excellent and commendable and worthy of praise.  A conviction strong enough to move us from “looking after our own interests, to looking after the interest of others.” (1 Corinthians 10:24) The passage in Luke 16 moved Schweitzer to Africa, where does it move us?  Be inspired.  Be challenged.  Be moved.