you won't make yourself a name if you follow the rules

My sister, the one who's officially helping out with Sunday school but is unofficially teaching the class, is assembling a great many Advent garlands. Strips of paper with instructions on them, stapled into interlocking loops, and the kid removes one loop per day and follows the instruction. Clean your room without being told. Help your parents with the dishes. That sort of thing. And one of the instructions is 'pray for the homeless'.

Uh, sister? Sister's students? Hi, I'd like to introduce you to my UU congregation's pet project: the local interfaith men's shelter. They're looking for groups of four to cook dinner for forty several nights of the week between Christmas and New Year's, and they're looking for donated food to be cooked, and they're probably looking for new socks (because when are homeless shelters not looking for socks), and and and. And it being an interfaith shelter, the last thing they're going to do is turn up their nose at donations from Catholics.

Know what's not actually going to keep those men from being hungry and having chilly feet? Prayer without action.