We have agency.

In case you woke up today with a bit of an emotional hangover from yesterday’s events, like I did, here’s the reminder that we all need that we are powerful to change our present and future: 

Yesterday, an anonymous friend met with me over coffee to give me the envelope that you see in the photo above. She is an older woman who served as a critical mentor and hand-holder for me when I was a teen. She’s always led with humility, curiosity and so much grace. 

But she’s never had much financially. She’s past the age of retirement now and is unable to retire. She enjoys work and plans to keep it up as long as she can, and trusts in God’s ability to provide for her daily. 

She received a stimulus check over the weekend from the U.S. government like so many of us did. She could have saved it, spent it, invested it… but like so many of us, she also felt that she didn’t really need it. Her bills are paid for, there’s spare cash at home, and she hasn’t suffered a job loss or economic impact in the midst of this pandemic. 

So, instead… she met with me for coffee and she pushed this envelope across the table. In it were the full contents of her stimulus check. Her directive: spend this on people who need it, who have suffered real loss this year. Her eyes welled up with tears as did mine as she said, “Imagine what our world could be if we were all willing to share.” 

It struck a chord so deep down inside of me. And for a moment, the conversation paused and I began to imagine what the world really could be like if we all acted in this kind of preferential generosity all the time, or at least half of the time. 

Would people still feel as unseen as they do today? Like they have to grab at power in order to be noticed or appreciated? Would people worry that they have to put a stake in the ground to claim what is theirs if their needs were already provided for? Would mental health and crime and addiction rates be what they are if we were lavish in generosity toward our rooted communities? Could we collectively move the needle on the despair and division and hopelessness that we all felt yesterday on January 6th, 2021, through the agency of generosity? 

I know the answers that I began to see in my mind as I imagined a present and a future that is different than where we are now….

And we have agency to choose and create that vision instead.

The government doesn’t get to choose it for us. Agency is a human right gifted to us by the Divine. We have choice, and because we have choice, we have power. 

Things at the macro-level right now feel overwhelming. I don’t know how to fix the systemic evils, broken unities, sickness and despair facing our people at a national [and global] level. But I do know how to zoom in- to zoom in the focus to the micro-level… to my family, to my friends, to my neighbors, to my co-workers, to my church, to my city, to the people I engage with on my social media platforms… I can zoom in on them, zoom into these trenches, and from here I can choose to build a better world brick-by-brick with acts of preferential generosity, radical kindness, and a humility (and submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ) that chooses open hands over clenched fist-living. 

I have agency. And so do you. 

“Imagine what the world could be like if we were all willing to share?” 

My friend reminded me yesterday (on perhaps one of the better days for a person to be reminded, considering the historic events)… that we, the individuals, are still powerful to choose kindness over hate, grace over cancel culture, humility over ego and pride, justice over centuries of racism, and 77th chances for people and systems who have failed and disappointed us but in whom we choose to pursue redemption, reconciliation, and the “making of all things new.” 

I can choose. And I am choosing. I invite you to join me… in brick-by-brick building in the trenches for a better future.