Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Pick a frivolty

I was a combination of pensive and surly today.  My motivation? Poverty and the American dream.  We live in houses way too big for our needs.  We drive obscenely expensive cars that get replaced every year for the next model.  We eat like kings, or even better, every day, so much so that we have completely lost the concept of feasting.  We live in opulence and comfort beyond nearly everyone else's dreams, in all of history.  Then we claim that it is our right to do so.
What about love?
All that I have just described is a typical day in America.  All the while, children all over the world starve to death, the masses are abused, displaced and lose everything.  Tyrants and despots take advantage of the authority given them, while their own people suffer, almost beyond comprehension.  All the while, we feast.
The thing that really makes me mad is my feeling of helplessness.  I don't have an abundance of money with which to make a difference.  But then it occurred to me.  God hasn't told us to obey his command of caring for the needy IF we can make a huge difference.  We should obey because God has told us to.  Big deal if we can spare $25 a month, that is nothing to most of us, but would make a huge difference for many elsewhere.  I had the idea: what if we actually sacrificed and gave to the needy the money that we would spend on some frivolity?  So, for example, what if we gave away $100 a month instead of having 500 channels of cable tv?  I know our suffering would be immense, but that amount of money would do amazing things.
We should help because we should love.  If we simply don't care, then we simply do not belong to Christ.

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