For some of us, advocacy is like a onetime cross-cultural experience. For some of us, advocacy is another way of "coming of age." It is a way of demarcating themselves from their own history. For some of us, advocacy is a way of exerting their gifts of persuasion and organization to come out on top.
Describing these forms of advocacy in no way discounts their potential for good. We've probably all found ourselves in one or more of those forms at one time or another. Sometimes things turn out much better than we planned for or expected. Imperfect people can be agents in accomplishing very good things in the world.
More often than not, however, our efforts do not yield what we had hoped, at least not in the short run. Far too often, well-intentioned and hardworking people do not see the results commensurate with their efforts.
The challenge for each of us is to allow advocacy to become a way of life and not a one-time experience that inoculates us against a lifetime of truly seeing the needs speaking faithfully for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Advocacy is tiring work. Results are not immediate. The work is never done. Even with occasional dramatic victories, changing the law is a long way from changing culture or changing hearts.
Sustained faithfulness in advocacy must be grounded in a larger life of discipline, humility, and hope if it is to endure for the long haul. We are sometimes called to invest our lives in causes that seem to go nowhere, because it is the right thing to do, because the tapestry of history is longer in the making than our lifetime.
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