Blogging on my phone tonight... I'm too tired to stay awake,  and too awake to go to sleep.  I'm sure that tomorrow will be another very tired day,  and I am not sure there's anything I can do to help myself.

Right now I'm experiencing a mood that I've experienced a few distinct times in my life,  and it's distressing.

I feel like I'm in love with every person who has ever lived,  and I am totally helpless to rescue them all.... because I need to be rescued,  too. I mean,  really.  It's a crazy feeling. It's like a revolving door of panic and longing, and I can't seem to step out. I can't stop thinking about,  and sympathizing with,  the real suffering I've seen or learned about.

When,  oh God,  will you finish your work? How long will humans harm other humans? How long will there be homelessness and poverty? How long will we subject ourselves to human governors: equals ruling over equals with capricious imposition!

Yesterday slavery was ok,  today its wrong. Yesterday murder was wrong,  today it's a "choice" and therefore(?) a right.  Today a man may govern his business according to his conscience,  tomorrow he may not.  If a man thinks he's two men, or an animal, then  it's a sickness, because he rejects empirical reality.  If he thinks he's a woman,  though,  then nobody better say anything to disagree with him. We all have to play along, because we wouldn't want to hurt his feelings. Yesterday,  colonialism.  Tomorrow,  gentrification. Is the space of two or three generations really that long of a time?

Four hours north,  brothels are legal. Eight hours south,  human trafficking is a significant problem. Everywhere else in America,  prostitution is illegal... unless it's on the internet,  or in a strip club. What about the feelings of those exploited women, now lobbying for their right to kill their children. Why do people even on TV act ashamed if they're chaste? It's as if we think a woman who guards herself with modesty is devaluing her body by not showing it to every interested man.  As if making something easy to access causes it to be more valuable somehow. As if it's shameful for a woman to want a guy to work hard to earn the right to access her body,  and to commit himself to her first. Isn't the life long commitment, which proves to everyone that his love for her is nor contingent on her fleeting beauty, so much more precious than relatively cheap dating relationships?

And the wealth gap! Don't get me wrong,  I'm not in favor of hiring thugs to steal from the rich and give to the poor (I mean,  the IRS). The problem isn't taxes, and it isn't capitalism, and history demonstrates that raising the minimum wage won't solve the problem -- the problem is greed. I can't change anyone's heart, and two wrongs don't make a right.  I see the homeless people on the street,  and I know how easy it is to lose everything. And worse yet in my mind is when I see women panhandling -- every man who drives by, including me,  should feel ashamed that a woman lives in our midst without providence! Men,  be men! Only, what can I do? I know the danger lurking in my heart. I can't have her in my house for an extended time, because I'm a married man.  No,  the Bible gives the answer: churches should be banding together to help these women. I'm ashamed that I am not leading that march.

I could go on endlessly,  and that's just outside my door! Go a little further, see the exploitation of young men and women in Asia. See the violence left behind by atrocities in Africa. See the hatred in the middle east. See the senseless poverty in North Korea and China. See the empty churches in Europe.

See me, worried about paint, not doing anything with eternal value, self pitying, and worse for mentioning it about myself.

I must do something. I must take action.

I'm going to stop by the local food bank tomorrow. A few people in my church have expressed an interest in volunteering. I'll take the first step.

"But dead people do weep."