Sitting here listening to The Last Hope.

I really do like punk rock. There's something about the raw quality of it, the reality and the honesty in it that just gets me every time. Or perhaps it is a direct correlation with my somewhat rebellious side, you know, like that part of me in music form.

The first song on their newest cd is wonderfully titled "Manifesto." For those of you who don't know what a manifesto is, it's a public declaration of what you want to see happen, of your vision and your dreams. The manifesto that The Last Hope provides is strikingly similar to my own. The lyrics to "Manifesto" are as follows:
Brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, we are the future of what's to come. We all have hands, we all have feet, let's work them hard, marching to the beat. Mothers and fathers, servants and leaders, rich and poor, authors and readers, heed the call, take to the plow. The time is now, the time is now! Heed the call to destruction of selfishness and vain ambition. Heed the call to community; dreams of future given so freely.

There's so much I see wrong not only within American society but within the Church as well, specifically the American church. We think that because we have been blessed monetarily and have been given everything we need and more that we can just be apathetic to everything else. We throw some money at the Salvation Army or some other charity and continue to live our lives. Every once in a while we'll go on a mission trip, feel good about what we have done, and come back home forgetting about those people and putting physical distance between us and them. While giving money to Salvo and mission trips are good things, sometimes they are just patches trying to cover up a hole five million times bigger than the patch you just put on. Let's actually live in community with each other and do away with this selfishness and apathy our society has instilled in us! Let's be God's hands and feet, heeding His call and going out, making disciples of all nations (including those in our physical community).