You are passionate about helping the starving indigenous people of wherever. Will you feed the hungry man on the corner down the street?

You are looking for someone to share the Gospel with. Have you forgotten about that friend you grew up with, the one you know isn't a believer; the one you give a 'pass' to because it would be awkward to approach the subject?

The further removed a problem is, the more convenient it is to to pitch in your token assistance (or your token concern) and feel better about yourself while keeping your precious distance. Don't let anyone else's problems get too close to home, or they may make you get your hands a little dirty. They make make you sweat a bit. They may cost a little more than you actually want to give of yourself.

Give to world hunger relief organizations. Invite the stranger with the 'Will work for food' sign to a meal.

Show your support for those fighting intolerance and injustice in that foreign country. Be loving towards the guy at work that just rubs you the wrong way, and the one who holds such very different beliefs.

Help shoulder the load for the financially needy in your community. Don't neglect the emotional needs of the average Joe you pass by every day in the hall.

Donate towards the printing of tracts and Bibles in every language. Spread the Gospel among those you know the very best.

Ask. Seek. Inquire. Find out what makes people tick, what drives them, what goals they have, what scars they carry. Find out what needs you can meet for the barista you see every morning, or the guy that cleans the floors in your office. You see him at least one a week — do you even know his name?

Don't forget to help the guy next door when you're working on saving the world. Don't limit your charity to non-contact, zero-investment, emotionless drive-by donations. And don't hide your lamp under a basket because it's awkward to be different.

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:10

By what metric do you measure your achievement in life? Do your achievements indicate your value or worth? Or is there something external to yourself, some objective reality to rest upon, that gives you worth despite your lack of achievement? If there is, what is it? If there is not, what would your life look like if there were?

What makes you tick?

What makes you think?

Oh Father, you have freed me from slavery to sin. You have made alive what was dead, and have called into being that which was not. Help me, then - give me a heart that longs to be in your presence, that rightly so considers your glory to be the most important thing there is. Enslave me to your righteousness, and make my rebellion so distasteful that I refuse to have any part of it. Father, your ways are higher than my ways, and your thoughts higher than my thoughts. Bring my thoughts and my ways close to yours. Align my life with your word. Break me of every wrong habit and purge every unclean word from my lips. Burn away my every hindrance and obstacle to full submission. Thank you, my God, for the forgiveness and acceptance you have imputed to me through Christ. He that knew no sin became sin, so that in him I might have his righteousness - how can I therefore still cherish my sin? Take it away, Lord. You have promised that you withhold no good thing from us, and that everything works out for good for those who love you, who are called according to your purpose. Cleanse me, then. Oh, do not tarry in sanctifying your servant. Break me and bruise me, but only remove my leper's spots and make me pure.

Søren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination

For the sake of your own life, give your body the nutrition it needs. Exercise your mind and do not be overly entertained with trivialities. Search your soul and listen to the quiet voice that you are accustomed to ignoring and see that there is no great mystery to fulfillment: give yourself to Christ and he will satisfy your thirst.

“To the Chief Musician.
With stringed instruments.
On an eight-stringed harp.
A Psalm of David.

O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
Have mercy on my, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord —how long?

Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake!
For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?

I am weary with my groaning;
All night I make my bed swim;
I drench my couch with my tears.
My eye wastes away because of grief;
It grows old because of all my enemies.

Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity;
For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.
The Lord has heard my supplication;
The Lord will receive my prayer.
Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled;
Let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly.”

Psalm 6

Just as I am, without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me,
and that thou bidst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, though tossed about
with many a conflict, many a doubt,
fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, thou wilt receive,
wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
because thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Thanks be to God that though the inclination of my flesh is only evil continually, He has purposed my life to bring Him glory. It's astounding that I ever forget what He has accomplished.

Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say:

‘Return, backsliding Israel,’ says the LORD;
‘I will not cause My anger to fall on you.
For I am merciful,’ says the LORD;
‘I will not remain angry forever.
Only acknowledge your iniquity,
That you have transgressed against the LORD your God,
And have scattered your charms
To alien deities under every green tree,
And you have not obeyed My voice,’ says the LORD. Jeremiah 3:12-13

Sometimes you could see little fragments of reflections of what was wrong but they were just fragments and you couldn't put them together. He remembered seeing The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, in which one edge of the stage had an arrow-shaped neon sign flashing on and off, on and off, and beneath the arrow was the word, "PARADISE," also flashing on and off. Paradise, it kept saying, is right where this arrow points:
PARADISE → PARADISE → PARADISE →But the Paradise was always somewhere pointed to, always somewhere else. Paradise was never here. Paradise was always at the end of some intellectual, technological ride, but you knew that when you got there paradise wouldn't be there either. You would just see another sign saying:
PARADISE → PARADISE → PARADISE →and pointing another direction to go.

On a theater marquee, the title Rebel Without a Cause caught his attention in the same way. It pointed to the same low-quality thing that he saw everywhere but which couldn't be put into words.

You had to be a rebel without a cause. The intellectuals had preempted all the causes. Causes were to the twentieth-century intellectuals as manners had been to the Victorians. There was no way you could beat a Victorian on manners and there was no way you could beat a twentieth-century intellectual on causes. They had everything figured out. That was part of the problem. That was what was being rebelled against. All that neat scientific knowledge that was supposed to guide the world.

Phaedrus had no "cause" that he could explain to anybody. His cause was the Quality of his life, which could not be framed in the "objective" language of the intellectuals and therefore in their eyes was not a cause at all. He knew that intellectually contrived technological devices had increased in number and complexity, but he didn't think the ability to enjoy these devices had increased in proportion. He didn't think you could say with certainty that people are any happier than they were during the Victorian era. This "pursuit of happiness" seemed to have become like the pursuit of some scientifically created, mechanical rabbit that moves ahead at whatever speed it is pursued. If you ever did catch it for a few moments it had a peculiar synthetic, technological taste that made the whole pursuit seem senseless.

Everyone seemed to be guided by an "objective," "scientific" view of life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved material body. Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. No two brains can merge physically, and therefore no two people can every really communicate except in the mode of ship's radio operators sending messages back and forth in the night. A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in little cells of psychic solitary confinement, unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so. Each individual in his cell of isolation was told that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he worked, his whole life is that of an animal that lives and dies like any other animal. He could invent moral goals for himself, but they are just artificial inventions. Scientifically speaking he has no goals.

Sometime after the twenties a secret loneliness, so penetrating and so encompassing that we are only beginning to realize the extent of it, descended upon the land. This scientific, psychiatric isolation and futility had become a far worse prison of the spirit than the old Victorian "virtue" ever was. That streetcar ride with Lila so long ago. That was the feeling. There was no way he could ever get to Lila or understand her and no way she could ever understand him because all this intellect and its relationships and products and contrivances intervened. They had lost some of their realness. They were living in some kind of movie projected by this intellectual, electromechanical machine that had been created for their happiness, saying:
PARADISE → PARADISE → PARADISE → but which had inadvertently shut them out from direct experience of life itself—and from each other.”

Robert M. Pirsig, Lila

I originally intended to quote only the last paragraph, but the more I considered the issue, the more I became convinced of the necessity of context, which itself needed more context. Upon the completion of typing it all out, being concerned that I would potentially be breaking some legal law by directly quoting so much from this book, I looked at a rule-of-thumb guide to Fair Use. My goal in quoting this passage from Pirsig's Lila is first that you would think about the nature of quality, and second that you would consider investigating what Pirsig has to say on the subject. Given that the character of my use is to highlight the book's worth, that the portion of the book that I am quoting here is a mere ~1/235^th of the entire work, and that the only likely effect of my use will be to increase the sales figures of the book by a few copies bought by a few friends that read what I post here, I am reasonably satisfied that I have little cause for concern regarding a legal violation. I am wholly convinced that I have acted morally, whether or not I have been in technical violation of copyright law.