Easy Button

Have you ever looked at a situation and experienced an overwhelming sense of hopelessness?
I found myself recently looking at problems in the body of Christ: contradictions, gossip and complacency; and I found myself overwhelmed.
Everything is messed up, and there is no "easy button".
There is not one thing to fix all of the "ish" in our lives.
G.K Chesterton wrote to the letter of the editor in response the question: what is wrong with the world?
His response was: I am.
We are the problem. We are whats wrong with the body of Christ.
There are a lot of people in the body of Christ.
Where do we start?
With ourselves.
I use the analogy of the mess a hurricane leaves after a storm, often. It comes through, ripping apart lives with destructive winds of change and leaves a huge mess, only to make us clean up after it.
There is a huge mess in the church, people have been wrecked, and things need to be cleaned up.
How do you clean up after a hurricane?
One thing at a time?
The same goes with any other problem: you fix it one thing at a time.
The problem in the church cannot be solved with better worship services, better evangelism, better scenery, better graphic design teams, better plans.
The problem starts with us, and must be fixed in us first, then the person in front of us, then we move along, loving Jesus, one person at a time.

I didn't understand this until I remembered what it was like being a life guard this summer.
We used to have to swim test people as they swam across a lake. 200 people would be tested at a time. Now, if they had all jumped in the water, and started to swim at the same time, what would have happened if 4 people couldn't swim? They'd be killed by the masses because we couldn't focus our attention on them.
But.
We filed them in a line, and focused on every person: one at a time. The multitude wasn't as big of a deal when we focused on the individuals.
Suddenly, it didn't become this giant problem, it was just us looking after our flock, one sheep at a time.
The same goes with every other problem.
You cannot save the multitude if you can't first save the person in front of you.
Just a little food for thought.
I'm not thinking too clearly; I'm on a 3 day fast and don't have a whole lot of thinking abilities right now.
Pray for me, I hope this encourages someone.
Love,
-Josh