“If you want to change the world, make your bed…” So begins the first chapter of Admiral McRaven’s treatise on how each of us can positively affect the world we live in and make it a better place to be.
Not one of the young people of Guepard Boxing Club in Cité Soleil, Haiti has a bed to make, but that does not stop them from changing their world. Over the weekend, 30 of them went into the streets that surround the GBCCS kitchen to clean as best they could.
“We would normally have many more children participate,” program manager Justin Ricot reports, “but all summer long there has been more gunfire in the streets, so we kept the number small.”
Regardless of the number, the very presence of these kids sweeping the streets with their homemade brooms – even on their hands and knees – is inspiring and sends a message. These kids want to change the world and they want to make it better. I am reminded of the verse in Isaiah 2:4
… they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4
Surrounded by gang violence, these young people are choosing brooms over guns. They set an example for people to follow all over the world.
Mitakuye Oyasin
I am looking forward to that day. It may not be that far off.