When you don't know what else to do...

I have been rather distracted by news from Iran the last couple of weeks. The following post from "The Daily Dish" caught my attention this morning. I think it captures how a lot of people feel about this. A reader wrote to Andrew Sullivan:
"Still, besides turning my twitter avatar green and donating money to tehranbureau.com (god, those sound even sillier writing them out) I don't know what I can do. I know the answer is nothing. It just doesn't seem like enough."

Sullivan responded:
" I understand the feeling. My own sense of helplessness is abated by blogging manically. It's all I know to do. But watching a boot come down on a human face in real time is ... well more than frustrating. But this is the fallen world we inhabit in which power always trumps freedom if it is ruthless enough in the short term. What we look for is the long term, the arc of history, and the rightness of the cause. Our job cannot be to end tyranny or evil, for that is impossible and the attempt can be counter-productive. But we can expose it, explain it, witness it and through the march of time chip way at it."

Sullivan, by the way, is a Christian, so I find this response very interesting, but I would go further. Yes, we can do all those things, and yes, we need to believe that Jesus is going to make the world right in "the long arc", but above all else we can pray. And when we don't know what else to do that is a great comfort. "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."