Go and Do by Jay Milbrandt

Go and Do by Jay Milbrandt

This book was not what I expected but glad I read it. Author Jay Milbrandt takes the old idea of go to school. Get good grades. Get a good job. Work twenty years and retire happy. Blows it right out of the water. With a world so caught up with self this book is a relief. The world is a smaller place today. Tribal hills of eastern countries have smart phones while still living in wooden huts. It is not till you have seen the lack of basic needs do we discover how different the world is from the U.S.

The travels from Jay's college days to his service in the Global Justice Program. As a young law student one summer he entered into the Go and Do experience. Forever changing his life and the lives of others.

How often we too want to go and make a difference when it is those experiences that end up making a difference in our lives. Though I may never be able to travel to far away lands, Go and Do made me see the world a little different than when I first began reading the book.

I can relate to how the author put it, “I like doing the little that I can with the little bit that I have.” As Jay shows, just a little bit can make a big difference in someone's life even around the other side of the world.

He opens up with outreach. The basis of the “Great Commission.” Yet outreach can be the hardest action to get fellow Christians to do. At first you feel as if you are doing nothing. Feeling unprepared and thinking you could be doing something better with your time. Not so, as the author points out over and over again that just being present can make all the difference in the world in the lives of others. Beyond what we might expect.

Within the book we go along with Jay Milbrandt on his journey and into the Go and Do experience. We see the hardships. We feel the distress one goes through trying to help to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than us. When I say less and mean really less fortunate. Imagine if you could. Being woken in the middle of the night having to run for your lives. Your family scattered to the wind. Death all around you. These are just some of the conditions faced by our brothers and sisters in developing countries. Developed by who? It is always the children who are made to suffer the most.

Rich or poor, we as Christians all have the ability and desire to “Go and Do.” Sure traveling overseas sounds great, but it is not a vacation. We come back with stories of the lives of others. Forever touched deeply by our fundamental interaction.

Many of us dream of “Going” but never “Doing.” Go and Do is a challenge and a dare by the author. To dare to “Go” and get involved in something that helps others which in turn makes us come alive inside. There is the point. To come alive inside. Something corporate America has no desire to fulfill.

Either working globally of locally. Each one of us has been called to “Go and Do.” Just many of us seem to ignore that voice of God calling upon us. Ignoring it for a calling of self-absorbed infatuation with the American lie spawned by corporation after corporation. A world that screams, “Forget about others. Get what you can for yourself.” A world of haves and have-not. The haves seem fleeting standing before God on the day of judgment.

A great call to action and guide book for getting started. I highly recommend reading “Go and Do” by Jay Milbrandt.