bread and justice

"O God, to those who have hunger give bread;

and to us who have bread give the hunger for justice."
A Latin American prayer

...

Several years ago when I worked for City Year, I had the opportunity to hear its co-founder Alan Khazei speak on numerous occasions; he always talked about how one of the principal outcomes of a year of full-time community service for many of the young adult participants was that their "justice nerve" would become activated through their contact with children, families, and communities whose needs went far beyond better jobs or after school programs. An awareness of how systemic, structural obstacles like government policies or the unwritten "rules" and values of a neighborhood could destroy opportunity as well as hope in the lives of the materially poor. Such an awareness would make it clear that while the altruistic impulse within them (and within me) is good, compassionate, loving, etc., it is not enough.

...

It is not enough because giving bread to hungry people does not end hunger. Hunger (and a lot of other problems facing Nicaragua and many other nations) will end when we truly believe in the God-given equal dignity and worth of every person and our commitment to social and economic justice infiltrates everything we do, from the policies formed at the highest levels of government to the way communities organize themselves to the way parents raise their children and how men and women treat one another.

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Then too, will the lion and lamb lay down together and war will be no more...

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(Seven years after my City Year experience, my justice nerve is more sensitive than ever.)