I was listening to an historian one   day named James Burke in an interview. This was several years ago. I can’t remember if it was 2006 or 2007. It was before the economic troubles of 2008 though. I remember thinking how prescient his comments were. He said something to the effect that we look at what is happening in the world and rest secure, like a child on a park bench swinging his legs beneath him licking his snow cone, glad the economists and politicians have a handle on things. The truth be known, no one has a handle on things. There is no handle. Humanity is hanging on the proverbial thread. Tomorrow we could wake up to a different world. It could be God’s good pleasure to shake the foundations.

I think of Teddy Roosevelt’s speech at the Sorbonne in Paris. The speech was titled Citizenship in a Republic. It was in this speech which he spoke the famous lines about the man in the arena. He said,

“It is not the critic who counts….but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I cannot help but think how better-off our communities, nation, and world would be if there was less analysis and more action. At least in equal doses. We are terribly lopsided in that regards. Our strength, or joy, or safety, or progress as a people will never be impacted by more analysis than action. Hebrews 10:24 says, “[L]et us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works….”