Poverty

One image after another. Passed across the internet, newspapers, television, cinema screens, Music concerts.

Of children dying senslessly of preventable illnesses, teenage women working 16 hr days in sweat shops, suffocating poverty, environmental disasters.

It leaves me completly overwhelmed and empty at the same time.

These images of vulnerable people are passed on, it sometimes seems, as a legitamate way of making a difference.

I can watch, feel awful, pass on the message. Pass on.

Pass by.

Yet like these celebrities, clicking their fingers, the irony makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I don't want to "pass on" pass by. A face that cares but does not change in response.

Also, I must admit that unlike the people on this ad clicking their fingers, I don't have any personal wealth to give, and I'm surley not about to attain any. So what more can I do but watch?

Maybe the greatest difference I am able to make right now comes down to what I can leave out of my life than what I can give from it. Maybe it's about what I choose to do with what I have, however small.

As mother Theresa said so well " We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

I have recently put a fairtrade button on my sidebar, this is something I can do.

I can also choose to by my clothes from second hand charity shops or ethical online stores that stock fair trade. I can make my own clothes even! I can choose to buy fairtrade food. Local food from local suppliers. I can even grow my own in an allotment or in a tub in my own back yard. I can stop buying toys for my kids that are probably made by kids in a factory on the other side of the world.

I can go to reycling centres, charity shops for furniture. I can buy secondhand. I can stop buying new gold that is mined by children in Africa who risk their lives everyday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CDwJRz6ySU

I have another button on my sidebar for writing to persecuted prisoners abroad. This is something I can do too. As is being an advocate for cases involving human justice through organisations like Amnesty International. I can write.

I can choose to live simply. Use what I need and when I have no use for it any more, pass it on to somebody else.

It has been easy for me to think I need alot of things to be happy, normal, respectable, respected.

A nice neighbourhood to live in, a larger house, a better car, a great collection of cd's, dvd's, books, elegant clothes, toiletries, ornaments, kitchen wear, accesories, highlights in my hair, baby equiptment, toys, possesions that make a staement about who I am, what I believe in. Possesions that define what sort of social bracket I fit into.

Lifestyles are sold to us all the time, as is disatisfaction. I can choose not to buy into the illusion.

I can choose to make up sandwiches for homeless people in my area or volunteer at a soup kitchen every once in a while.
Every day is a gift from God. How can I best show gratitude for that gift? Can I give it back with something more, from myself like the man with the talents. I can increase the value of the gifts I have been given in my life by doing something with them.

I can cut down my children's programs and give that money to children who can't even afford to learn to read. I can do that.

I can visit the old, the sick, the widows in my neighbourhood, offer a helping hand or just stay with them and listen.

I can prioritize.

I can do more than simply watch and click and then watch as others watch and click after me.

Everything that God has blessed me with He has blessed me with for a reason.

And what he has given me does not actually belong to me. Even if I have earned something with my talents I have been given those talents my God.

While my sister lies hungry in Africa I should not be filling my grocery bags with the choicest food. I have not been blessed so that I can indulge without thought.

Sometimes all I do is click my fingers and wait. Wait for somebody else to make the change.

But I can do.

I can pray.


Lord open my eyes to what I can do today.

Let me see my neighbour in the stranger, in the lonley, in the lost.

So that I may stop to help him somehow, in someway ,

Not simply pass on or pass by to the other side of the road.

Lord give me ears that I may hear.

Your voice calling in the homeless, the hungry, the needy, the grieving, the broken, the sorry.

Take my hand and tell me to walk. Lead me to the places where I may find you,

Heal me of my paralysis, when I feel so overwhelmed that I can't do everything,

Give me something, something I can do.

In this day I have been blessed with.

Help me find a way to give the gift back to you.