But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.---James 1:22

     New York City reporter Jacob Riis made it his business to let the world know what being poor was like.  His vivid descriptions of ghetto life in 19^th century New York horrified a generally complacent public.  His "magic lantern show" of photographs taken of the poor in New York so stunned lecture halls that his audiences felt they were present in the tenements themselves.  Many fainted, and it is said not a few talked aloud to the people in the photos.

     Riis' book, How the Other Half Lives, combined his writing with his own photographs to paint a picture so vivid the public could not escape the certainty of its existence. The third of fifteen children, Riis wrote so effectively because, once upon a time, he lived in that world of terrible despair.

     Shortly after the release of his book, a card was delivered to Riis from a young man only then beginning his political career.  The card read simply, "I have read your book, and I have come to help.  Theodore Roosevelt."  

     Hard-nosed, skeptical, world-weary Riis immediately became a disciple of the future President for life.

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     It is not enough for us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to successfully conquer obstacles and become self-sufficient. Our individual lives must be trailblazing, leaving not scorched earth but well-lit paths that others may follow out of the same perilous plights we once faced.  We owe it to the tired and poor to call attention to their plight and not merely celebrate the fact that we made it out of that morass ourselves.  We owe it to our God to love others so much that the memories of their poverty wrest us from our complacency to a place of action.

     Those who have never known the ache of need are called to write with our lives and resources "cards" that read like Roosevelt's note: "I have seen your need and I have come to help."  Not only to write, but to act. (Be doers and not hearers only-James 1:22). Hope in the midst of despair often comes merely by hearing that others are coming.

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     Followers of Jesus Christ know both sides of this equation. Confronted by the squalor of sin in their lives, no hope existed for rescue from the darkness of present and eternal separation from a loving God.  No amount of good deeds could bridge the gap or quench the darkness of the soul.

     Then God read the book of our lives.

     In a bed made of straw, surrounded by a stunned young couple, shepherds still covered with the dust of their journey, and a world desperately in need of some sign of hope, a tiny baby's birth echoed these words:

      "I have come to help."

--Randy Kilgore