Hero. [Happy Birthday, Rob Morris.]

Heroes: David, Yousuf, Kevin, Anis, Charles, Lindsay, Jon, Thomas, Ansel. (Photos by other people, except for the one of Lindsay.)

We’ve all got heroes, right? Those people whose work inspires us and makes us want to be better in the various arenas of life.

My (notably incomplete) list looks like this:

• Clarkson and Wilberforce.
• David.
• Jon Acuff.
• Kevin Bales.
• Lindsay Terrell.
• Anis Mojgani.
• Ansel Adams.
• Yousuf Karsh.
• Charles Spurgeon.

Rob Morris is rapidly working his way on to that list. Rob is the president and co-founder of the anti-slavery organization, Love146. The work that he does through that organization is enough to make him a hero, but that’s not what affects me most.

When I started following him on Twitter last year, I had it in my mind that he was maybe around the 30-year-old mark. Not more than 32, surely. Everything from his profile picture to his passionate and hopeful attitude towards life just yelled youth. After a while, I noticed he kept tweeting things about his family…his big family…and his six kids…and his daughter who was a college grad…and then I got very confused. “But how?! He’s so young. Wait….I don’t know how old he is.”

Today, Rob is 49 years old. And still, he tweets with enthusiastic optimism and with unbridled hope and passion for what he does. I know not all middle-agers are hardened and cold and cynical, but it seems like few face the world with the kind of hopeful abandon that Rob seems to live in everyday. And that’s how I want to live today and tomorrow and everyday until I’m 49 and (Lord-willing) beyond.

Check out Rob’s blog here:  http://love146.org/blogs/rob-morris

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