The Talmud teaches that we turn our eyes to earth but our hearts to Heaven.
Our eyes focus on earth, so that we see and deal with the world's problems.
At the same time, however, we turn our hearts to Heaven, not for practical reasons but for our own betterment.
God surely could have made a perfect, static world, but He did not.
He created a dynamic world with lacunae of all kinds, lacunae that facilitate movement and change.
God then entrusted this world to Man, a completely improbable being whose Divine soul rests in the body of a gorilla.
He created Man with both the capacity for greatness and the susceptibility to sin.
Then he made him a partner, albeit a very junior partner, in Creation.
From that moment it became our responsibility to finish His work, to observe every aspect of our world, to take responsibility for its problems and, most of all, to care about one another.
God does not want us to divert our eyes from sickness and poverty.
Rather He wants us to see them and act against them – not to earn "points" on a Heavenly slate, but because Heaven tells us that this is our job.
We may not be able to do everything, but we must do something.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From an essay, "Eyes to Earth, Heart to Heaven," by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz