In the November 1987 Reader’s Digest, Betty Wein retells an old tale she heard from Elie Wiesel (vee-zehl’):
“A just man comes to Sodom hoping to save the city. He pickets. What else can he do? He goes from street to street, from marketplace to marketplace, shouting, ‘Men and women, repent. What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you; it will destroy you.’
They laugh, but he goes on shouting, until one day a child stops him. ‘Poor stranger, don’t you see it’s useless?’
‘Yes,’ the just man replies.
‘Then why do you go on?’ the child asks.
‘In the beginning,’ he says, ‘I was convinced that I would change them. Now I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.’”
That is an example of faithfulness, in spite of how one feels or is influenced by the world.
From Paul Decker’s Sermon: What a Way To Go!