Here is a nice web site to put all our woes into perspective. I encourage you to enter in some smaller numbers (after you enter your own) the results should shock us. I know it shocked me.
This is information that I struggle with all the time. Every time I want to buy something, I think about the people we saw in Uganda drinking filthy water. I think about the children in tattered and torn clothes. I think about the kids who were blessed enough to have shoes, even though most were painfully to small for their feet. I think about how I was able to check myself in to a clinic and receive the best medical care the area could afford, in order to treat a resistant strain of malaria. I think about the mothers and fathers who will bury their child today, because they didn't have $5 for malaria medicine. These are the things I think about.
Even yesterday, while I shopped for Christmas gifts for my children. I wondered. We already do Christmas VERY meagerly in our home. Each child gets one gift, and the budget is low. Still I wondered. Is this what I should be doing with this money? Will I have to answer one day for these purchases...that we don't need...when there are people starving...people dying. I think often about how blessed we are. Then I wonder, where is the line? At what point does my spending cost someone else? I honestly don't know the answer. I am however, thankful that the Lord has opened my eyes to at least question what we spend and where we spend it. Something tells me though, that when I do stand before my God, that I will not regret giving in abundance. I just might wished I had given much more.
My dear friend April, told me a quote one time, and I have never forgotten it (although I have forgotten who said it...so I am hoping she will leave a comment and tell us who said it)
3 comments:
wow. That's unnerving.
Sometimes I think, where do I start? The need is so great. Obviously, I cannot help everyone. So who? Where? Hopefully, we will be embarking on one of those ways shortly, however, there's so much more...so many people. I think (could be dead wrong) that as an individual, I need to be helping at the bare minimum one other individual. God calls to to serve the poor and needy. What does that look like on a daily basis? To be conscious of the need is step one...what next? Action. Action is step two. How do I act? Locally? Globally? Both? Good food for prayer.
Wow! Not only am I really rich now, but I was really rich last year when I thought I was pretty broke. So thought provoking. I've been pondering this very sort of thing lately. Since our recent increase in income, my prayer has been that we will not raise our stadard of living but our standard of giving...I've been struggling with how much do we save? How much do we give, how much of this money is really ours.
The quote is by Randy Alcorn, it was on his blog http://www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com/
~April
That is a great post. Wow. This made me think.
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