How are you crying out?

3THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS,
'MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD,
MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.'" (Mark 1:3 NASB)

I'll be the first to admit that I am in fact a distinct person, someone who is unlike most others, and I believe that God has made me so for a reason, just as he has made each of us unique. I don't mean to criticize those who follow fashion trends just because they're fashion trends, or those who have not taken the time to evaluate who they truly are and (if Christian or otherwise spiritual), how they fit into God's plan.
If you look throughout the Bible, there are times when masses of people are used for God's glory, and also times where the acts of one or two people create the downfall of entire houses or civilizations. God uses a plethera of ways to influence the world, and while we can understand that His ways are huge and definately beyond our comprehension, at times you have to sit back and marvel at what He does.
John the Baptist... what a distinct and unique person. Never mind the eating locusts, or the camel hair and leather. Think about this: he was crying out in the wilderness. One man. Big place. God's chosen mechanism to usher in the savior of the world, and he chooses someone we would probably lock up and drug up today. Why not use a great mass of people? Maybe a few trumpets, like back in the good ol days of Jericho? You'd certainly get a little more publicity than one person yelling in the middle of nowhere, especially with such an important event as the savior of humanity coming forward.
But God didn't. He gave us one man in the wilderness, a man who ate the pests which destroyed good crops and wore camel hair as clothing (which gives me hope as a person with a non-conformist attire). John was loud and he was effective, even when he was preaching from the pulpit of nowhere to a group of people who couldn't understand the full ramifications of what he was doing.
Now there is no wilderness, nowhere we can go which is desolate enough to require a John the Baptist; or is there? We live in a society where less people have a knowledge about Jesus, and more people think it 'cool' to throw insults at Christians than validly evaluate the faith we have (not that I'm complaining). Let's be that voice in the wilderness, that one faint sound in the middle of a parched desert of spirituality, the slight hope of light and peace in such seas of darkness and confusion. People will look at you strangely, but we have to keep crying out in praise of the only being deserving of it. If you have hesitation, think of it this way: if you do not show Jesus's love to those around you and, if they are ready, show them the hope you have in Jesus, who will? Who will?

One slip-up

I feel very bad about what has gone on in the organization I preside over, and even worse that I didn't do what should have been done to prevent it. I am the president of the Residence Hall Association at SFU, a student government within the university's residences, and we put out a newsletter to the undergrad residences every month which we try to fill with events happening in residence and various entertaining items (or entertaining to the person making it). March's newsletter had some content in it which I would not repeat; safe to say that the glance I had of it after it was printed and reprinted on many hundreds of pages should have made me send it to the recycling bin as it in no way reflected what I want the organization to stand for or to be.
Yet I didn't stop it, and this worries me because it tells me that I can't respect my own values and intuition to follow them when a situation comes up where social pressures tell me to act against my values. It may be over-dramatic, but it reminds me of the quote from Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." For many years, I've tried to be the person who does something in the face of challenged values (of course all the while accepting the assumption, albeit perhaps true, that I am one of those "good men"); and now I have experienced the pain of doing nothing, and to offer some advice, if you feel your values being challenged, do something about it. Whether that is questioning why you value that thing or if it's saying no to the face of a group of people who would have you go against that value, do it. The moment you do nothing, someday it will come back and you will have this feeling in yourself like you have invalidated your own principles...
Well, that's enough self-pity. Please take what advice I have in this case, as the same situation could happen to you, and I pray you would do differently.