“There must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

Reading time: 1 minute, 40 seconds

“We need inspirational stories,” Pastor Brian said a few weeks ago.

I say, “Amen to that!”

We need stories about integrity, and courage, and perseverance, and about doing the right thing rather than surrendering to peer pressure.

We need stories written by thinkers and questioners,

by people willing to look at issues from various angles,

people willing to step forward and take a stand,

willing to expose evil and injustice,

willing to be leaders and role models for so many of us

who are cowards—or at least foot-draggers.

“But,” Pastor Brian continued, “choosing to live and act with faith is hard. Will we trust God?”

That’s the hard part: Will we trust God to help us step up and say what others need to hear?

Recently I read Jewish Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night.

You’ve no doubt heard about—and perhaps read—some of his books, but he says in the preface that “ . . . all my writings after Night . . . profoundly bear its stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works.” If you haven’t read his memoir, I encourage you to do so.

Elie Wiesel shows us what it looks like to put into practice this quote from his Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1986, below:

Maybe God is calling you to follow Elie Wiesel’s lead by writing your memoir.

Perhaps you can recognize yourself in what Wiesel wrote in his memoir's preface, “Convinced that this period in history would be judged one day, I knew that I must bear witness.”

Yet he also knew his “testimony would not be received. After all, it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest zone of man. . . .

“But would they at least understand?

“Could men and women who consider it normal to assist the weak, heal the sick, to protect small children, and to respect the wisdom of their elders understand what happened there? Would they be able to comprehend how . . . the masters tortured the weak and massacred the children, the sick, the old?

“And yet, having lived through this experience, one could not keep silent no matter how difficult, if not impossible, it was to speak.

“And so I persevered. . . .” (from the Preface to the New Translation [of Night])

Persevering is hard work. It can be discouraging work. Sometimes dangerous work. Often emotionally exhausting work.

“Choosing to live and act with faith is hard,” 

Pastor Brian said. “Will we trust God?”

In what ways will you trust God 

to help you say what others need to hear?

In what ways will you trust God 

to help you write what others need to read?