Years ago, when I was working to make an honest living as a minister, I participated and led many mission trips and disaster relief trips. It is considered a mission trip when one goes to another part of the country or to another country to assist the residents in a spiritual or physical endeavor. A disaster relief mission is one where a trained team goes into a region that has just experienced a natural disaster, such as a flood, tornado hurricane, etc. and renders immediate help that is needed for residents to try to recover from the disaster.
In either case we often stayed in homes or churches as there
were often no other accommodations available. I
always had a motto that I shared with my teams, whether we stayed in a church
or someone’s home. “Always leave it better than you found it!”
I noticed that especially on disaster relief trips where we
would often be housed in a church or facility with teams from other states or areas in camping type
situations because many motels or other resources had been
destroyed by hurricanes or tornados, that some teams would leave the areas in a
mess. I guess they did not realize that
church volunteers would have to clean up their mess in addition to recovering
from the tornado, flood or hurricane that had brought the teams to their area
in the first place.
I always told our teams that we would follow our motto; “Always
leave it better than you found it!” That applied not only to the area
where we would clear downed trees, make necessary repairs to downed homes,
etc. But we would also leave the
area/church/homes that hosted us without having to clean up behind us when we
left. We would leave every place better than
we found it as much as possible. I felt
that this would leave the most positive impression on those we came to
assist.
I still think this is a good way to look at life. I admit that some of this philosophy comes
from my OCD tendencies where I hate to see things left undone, trash left in
the parking lot, pictures hanging crooked, etc.
I know I should probably be in therapy.
My wife calls me a “Boy Scout” when I return shopping carts left
in the parking lot to the proper place or pick up trash that someone threw out
the window.
But think about it, what if we all decided to leave things
better than we found them? We would all
be seeking to improve the world around us rather than consuming and leaving
things for someone else to take care of it.
I have now long been retired and no longer lead people on
mission or disaster relief mission trips but I still try to leave things better
than I found them. And I still think
this is a good philosophy. I think the
world would be better if we left things better than we found it so others would
not be having to deal with a mess left behind by someone else.
This is one of my shorter blogs but I think I got my point
across. I hope that wherever you go and
whatever you do from this day forward you will try to “Always leave it
better than you found it!”
