Do you ever wish you could solve every problem that came across your desk with a furrow of your brow and a push of a button?  Wish you had an easy button, like the one in the Office Supply Store commercial?

• Need to help the people of a poor, impoverished, and landlocked country escape extreme poverty?  “That was easy!”

• Need to help people heal, forgive, and reconcile after genocide. “That was easy!”

• Need to make sure that the education impoverished children are receiving is an education worth having?  “That was easy!”

I’ll admit there are times when I want a secret formula and a “fast food” solution to healing lives and improving impoverished schools.  It is tempting to have the mentality that if only we could find the right model, the right message, or the right billionaire philanthropist, all would change for the good.   

I have to remind myself that a worthwhile vision is never easy.  Empowering people and transforming lives requires dogged determination.  There is no easy button.  There is no secret formula.  People are messy and complex.  They need time, trust, and opportunity.  Failure and disappointment can bring as many answers as triumph and success.

In a world of overwhelming need, we do not need prescriptive idealists or know it all naysayers, as much as we need people who are willing to sacrifice for what they believe in, and walk in the messiness of real lives, no matter how long it takes.