Current economic conditions have inadvertently created all kinds of opportunities for people everywhere to renew their commitment to serving and helping their fellow citizens. Churches and communities of faith are stretching their arms even wider to try and respond to the growing needs of their parishioners and surrounding neighborhoods and communities. Nonprofits and foundations are widening their programmatic agendas in order to be more financially relevant in an economic environment that is unprecedented. Private companies are being creative when it comes to marketing and purchasing options targeted at consumers who clearly have less discretionary income. As families and individuals adapt to the shifts in their financial and personal lives, they are also finding ways to extend a helping hand to friends and neighbors who may be experiencing unusual hardships. Displaced families are able to secure temporary living quarters and home furnishings from those who have second homes or unused space in their primary residences. Recently unemployed persons are finding new opportunities to barter their services and talents. Some are using these tough times to obtain additional academic and professional training at colleges, universities, and other trade and vocational institutions. Community gardens and thrift exchanges are examples of other creative ventures being used to help citizens lower their costs of living and make ends meet. What’s nice about tough economic times is that they seem to always teach us that we don’t need all of the excesses and creature comforts in life, and that we don’t live on an island. We also learn that the same unexpected hardships being placed on our friends and neighbors could very easily be our own. These reality checks essentially force us to build the kinds of caring and sharing communities that have characterized this nation and its provinces for centuries.