The culture wars continue—today controversial Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was sworn in on the Supreme Court. For those who were paying attention, the fight was rather bitter and polarizing. The final vote in the Senate was the most partisan in modern history. An article I read said that this was the crowning moment of conservative jurists in their twenty-year fight to take back the Court from liberal activist judges. Can you blame me for preferring to read about the Oscar nominations?

Sometimes it looks like what happens in government is all about money and power—who has power, who doesn’t have power, who feels threatened by their impending loss of power. And what about the rest of us? Who cares about the “least of these” when you’re trying to maintain or regain power? Where is the “love your neighbor as yourself” in all this self-aggrandizement? Is anyone surprised that so many young people are no longer invested in the democratic process?

Yet those same young people, with all their reputation of apathy, may just be the saving grace of the whole thing yet. NNPCW member Beth Shaw-Meadow, from Texas, just sent me a letter based on her experiences at a Presbyterian Disaster Assistance work camp in Louisiana helping with the Hurricane Katrina cleanup. Here’s what she said about her experience working with people who had lost everything:

“You would think in the wake of such devastation everyone would be hugely dejected and perhaps just give up. Just the opposite has occurred. In the past month I met some of the most hopeful, positive and uplifting folks I have ever met in my life. When you can watch a group of twenty people carry your most beloved possessions out of your home, throw them in a trash heap, and then rip the house that in some cases you built yourself down to the bare bones, and then shrug your shoulders and say “oh well, I guess we’ll just start over”, that to me is courage, and that is strength. Because in the end, it really is just all stuff. You also might think that after witnessing such widespread hurt and destruction we would feel down and depressed about our world. Again, just the opposite. I think I feel more hopeful and optimistic about the future and what we as people have the capacity to do to make it a better place than I have in years. A friend once told me that it doesn’t matter how big a problem is or how unsolvable it seems. If you’re doing something about it, no matter how small, the problems suddenly don’t seem so big after all.”

During my Pentecostal days, I remember hearing a lot about storing up “treasures in heaven.” Contrasting these two things—divide-and-conquer Washington politics with the courage and strength of those who have lost everything—I see that parable afresh. There is the quest for power, for possessions, for status, that leads nowhere. And there is the quest for God’s realm on earth, one where people come together as a community to help and encourage one another in love. For people pursuing such treasures, even a storm that washes away everything they have cannot rock their true foundation.

And God is among them, accompanying them on the path that leads to life.

“Do not story up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” --Matthew 6:8

Kelsey