If the Poor Can be Generous, So Can I.

I really enjoy the taste of coffee.  Often, I will frequent the local barista and sit down to enjoy a piping hot cup of joe.  I will open my laptop and check out the Facebook status of my friends scattered across the globe.  "John has just become friends will Michelle and five others.  Oh, how splendid."  Even as I drink from my cup, millions across the world who don't even access to a computer daily sit in abject poverty, while I sit  and collect more coffee cup sleeves for my collection.  Every day, my life goes on while another impoverished child will die in between sips of my coffee— coffee which could have been the result of a young Tanzanian boy harvesting the beans.  What might that boy's "status" update be?  I imagine it wouldn't be, "life is beautiful" or "... going to the mall tonight with friends, I'm so excited!"

The magnitude of the pandemic is overwhelming when we see the statistics of the extent of its reach.  The Food and Agriculture Organization states that 925 million people in the world were chronically hungry last year.  It’s not like us in the developed nations where we are bummed when they don’t get a nice juicy burger or steak once in a while from the local chic gourmet restaurant.  More than likely, they won’t ever even get to eat meat.  One in seven people on our planet do not able to eat the calories they need.  They live in constant undernourishment with deep hunger pains.  While thousands were losing their homes in 2006-2007 due to the mismanagement of funds and corruption, millions went without a second meal and without proper daily nutrition.  In 2008, the price of food skyrocketed on a global scale with over a 50% increase.  Most in the US hardly noticed it more than a minor inconvenience that we had to pay a few more dollar in our grocery bill; however, the poor who spend 60-80% of their income on food were hit horribly.  According to City Impact Ministries, several countries couldn’t even buy the basic items such as bead and rice which created riots in many places.  Many of the poor in the world went without a second already meager meal.  In the worst cases some would involuntarily fast for several days before the next meal. Hunger cruelly holds sweet morsels of health and strength over the heads of the poor just out of their reach and destroys any hopes of life ever being different. 

Doesn't anybody see or notice that most of the world doesn’t have the things they need just for basic survival.  That’s just the problem.  Most of us don’t even notice those around us.  We have so much of our own traffic going on in our own lives that we don’t notice the hurt and distress around us.  We are concerned with our self-image and self-preservation.  There are our own relationships to maintain, bills to pay, more wealth to build up.  We are enamored in all of our stuff and are not able to take time to look at the “other” let alone act on their behalf.

I can understand that we lose our perspective while living in a financially-privileged society in the United States.  The average American family is consumed with media, dining out and shopping that we don’t have any time to look at someone that might not live on an equal financial basis with us.  We don’t affiliate with the poor.  We are consumed consumers who are gluttons for the American glamour of the latest fashion trends and daydreaming about the high octane lifestyles of Hollywood’s heart-throbs.  In his book Rich Christians in an Age of Poverty, Ron Sider gives us great insight into are myopic view of the world when he stated, "Since the poor usually die quietly in relative obscurity, the rich of all nations comfortably ignore this kind of famine.”

God save us from ourselves. 

I’ve met some of the most generous people in underdeveloped nations of Africa like Uganda and Zimbabwe.  Some of these didn’t have much more than a thatched-roof hut and small garden in their yard with a few mangy chickens.  These people shared themselves with me-- a rich, white man that consumes 100 times more calories and goods than they in a year.  I was welcomed into their homes with open arms of embrace and mirthful singing.  They sat me in their best chair in their houses.  They butchered a chicken that would have provided their families with eggs for much longer than a feast they hosted for me that lasted only for the evening.  It was extravagant.  Poor people around the world are some of the most selfless people I have ever met, and the most generous. 

A few years back, I met a man named Papa John in a dusty bicycle-taxiing town called Mbale, Uganda lived a very modest lifestyle.  He doesn’t have much to offer in terms of money from his job working in a Christian development organization.  He has to catch a ride to work throughout the week by the local mini-bus taxi, but he is taking care of his wife and several children.  If that weren’t enough he was also taking care of several of the orphans that stay with his family as well.  He might not have much money, but this man demonstrated the generosity of more men that I think I have ever met in the United States. Living in an East African nation, he might not have all the amenities of our American lifestyle, but he lives life rich in love toward his family and children around him.  Wealth doesn’t aid or hinder our ability to give.  The poor can be generous, too. 

Although the poor like Papa John doesn't have the ability to update his "status" on Facebook, doesn't that make him or the children any less worthy of recognition?  If almost a billion people could give an status update, I would think they would have something to say "does anyone care."  When there are people like this in a comparatively poor nation such as Uganda, how can we do nothing about the poor and fatherless here in our own nation and those who fill our neighborhoods?  If our lives don’t move us out of gaining more financial stability for “us four and no more” than we have to re-examine our religion. 

“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?  Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”  I John 3:17-18

God, give us the eyes that you see people in the world with.  We want to be your hands and feet extended.