...one cookie at a time

I awoke from my afternoon nap today after troubling dreams brought on likely from another family blowout over differing opinions of America's current foreign policy. In awaking, my thoughts were somehow brought to the idea of "saving the world one cookie at a time"..

The thought comes from the movie "Stranger than Fiction" with Will Farrell. Highly recommend the movie. Fantastic story & just fantastic thoughts awakened throughout the entire movie. Can't recommend it highly enough. In part of the movie, Ana tells the protagonist Mr. Crick about how she started out trying to get a law degree to help fight for various causes. During her time in school she was part of a study group & started bringing cookies to the meeting. Over the course of time, the study group grew & grew because of those cookies & she ended up dropping out of school & became a baker in order to keep baking cookies for people.

The movie does such a better job of telling this that I am currently, but the moral of it is that she ended up affecting more lives through the simple things of giving people cookies to eat instead of doing the 'big', 'important' lawyer things.

In our judging/discerning America's role in the world; government's role in the world, we have to remember that people are people. Some are good, some are bad. Most of us are a mixture of both. Some of us come with great intentions, some with not so great intentions. Sometimes it's the good intentioned people who do the most damage. Sometimes we want to do good things, sometimes we want to do bad things. Sometimes we just don't care. And sometimes it is that apathy that is the most evil thing we do.

Governments are run by people. They are people who want to make a difference. People who want to get power. People who are looking to fill a void in their lives. People who have nothing better to do. People who are pushed there by others. People who fight there way there for a reason. At the end of the day, everyone does things out of some motivation that is, in some semblance, looking out for their own interests. This can lead to positive change, or negative change depending on whether or not you agree, or fall in line with, the interests of those wanting to make the changes.

The whole "changing the world one cookie at a time" thing is much like Jesus's idea of giving a cup of cold water in His name. Often we make a difference by making other's happiness our interests - not by changing the way they live, but by offering them little tokens of human kindness.