This week our large homeless shelter/food pantry organization held a winter “picnic” just to say thank you to our community which has resoundingly responded to support us in our hour of need these past six months.

Everyone was invited for food, music and fellowship!

Now admittedly, our organization is not entirely financially fixed, but we’re stable, and that’s a far cry better than where we were six months ago! And so we felt compelled to share the joy!

At that event, one of our shelter’s guests approached to tell me how much he appreciated the work we’ve done to save the shelter, because after six years of chronic homelessness, thanks to our team, he finally feels ready to transition into housing.

“Life-saving work” is what he calls the stuff we do at the shelter.

Nearly immediately, the months and months of long hours and nonstop work shed from my shoulders, my heart melted, and I was reminded what all the effort is for. It reminded me about what faith is, what the gospel is, and that we are all one in the Body of Christ.

What a tremendously joyful, galvanizing moment! Thank you sir!

Some might perceive this guest as irascible, and I admit, it’s taken some time for him and I to form a relationship. But now, he’s my biggest cheerleader every day I walk into work. … Which, I gotta tell ya, makes going to work … a lot less like going to work these days!

My point in all this is: I have been paying witness to a lot of tired and seemingly lost people of faith in my pastoring as of late. Many who share that they feel they can’t understand the direction the country has taken, and that is producing in them a sense of helplessness, maybe even hopelessness.

If this sounds familiar, this is my advice: Find someone or something, and pour your heart into them or it.

Find someone that needs your love, your support, your gifts, your skills, your time, your attention … your whatever … and pour it into them.

It could be your neighbor, a friend, a stranger, someone at the shelter, someone in your congregation.

Or the cause could be a homeless shelter, or a food pantry, or a low-income housing unit in your community. And if your community doesn’t have any of the above, then maybe you’ve identified your calling!

The most tragic mistake we make as faithful people is getting stuck waiting for God to act when all the time God tells us that’s why he has sent us.

My friends, if you’ve got time to feel despair over the current state of things, then you’ve got time to help others.

And I promise that is 100 percent more valuable to your mental health and to our world. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.