“Sometimes we learn the most from the least expected places”
I was reminded of the call to love recently when my neighbor’s light pole (Liberia Electricity Company, LEC) fell. The wires laid across the path I drove on every morning to work and every afternoon back home.
Every time I drove over it, I thought to myself, “This is unsafe,” but I didn’t do anything. The family went to the LEC office, but no one came to remove it.
We called the LEC hotline several times, but still no one came. And everyone in the community continued to ignore it like it wasn’t their problem.
On Friday afternoon I came home and found the lights had been switched off. When I inquired further, I found that a thoughtful community member had gone to LEC office to demand service. He understood the danger of that high tension wire just laying there in the streets and took actions.
LEC said they couldn’t send the truck to replace the pole, but they did send their safety team. They found that the situation was indeed high-risk and, as a result, turned the entire community off.
Now, because the entire community was in darkness, it suddenly became everyone’s problem. The community soon organized themselves to constructively engage LEC to get the lights on. Eventually, a solution will be reached and maybe the lights will be turned back on. Because of the action of one thoughtful neighbor, was what once their problem, became our problem.
This is a call to action. When Jesus spoke about the greatest commandment, this is what he had in mind – sacrificing our comfort for the greater good of the community, our neighbors. How developed our society would be if we considered “their problem” as “our problem”? How improved our lives would be if we started taking actions that benefited everyone and not just ourselves?
This is just an example of what could be achieved through collective action.
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