A new day

I woke up this morning excited that just a few hours later, our country would be blessed with a new President. That finally the last 8 years can begin to fade and we can head in a new direction. I found President Obama's inaugural address to be moving, beautiful, and hopeful. But I was also reminded this morning of how big our problems are.

Leaving work this morning, I saw a family of five - father, mother, and three very young children - walking down our street. The father was going through all of the recycling bins, looking for bottles and cans to redeem. His face was strained and lined. His family was very young - the children looked less than 5 years old, two were being pushed in their stroller and the third holding her mother's hand. Seeing individual people looking through the garbage cans for redeemables is not uncommon. But seeing a man doing so with his children out at 7 AM made me wonder if this family has the luxury of shelter? If they would be able to collect enough bottles for dinner tonight?

Thinking about this family and President Obama's speech, I know that the President's call for each of us to contribute something to the community is one that I'm going to do my best to answer. Hopefully we'll all be able to come up with some ideas of how to better our community - I'm still trying to figure out what I'll do. But perhaps you can help me with some good ideas!