According to the latest UN figures, there are now over 1 billion people going hungry every day.
Their definition of ‘hunger’ is having less than 1800 calories a day, which means they must discount anybody who has a 79 cent burger from McBurger-Schnitzel. It also discounts me, since I have been putting on half a pound a day for the last few weeks, which means I’m taking in a lot more than 1800 calories!
This really got me thinking about my priorities.
I sit here and overeat while spouting off about how we all ought to do more for the hungry and the homeless and any other group I can think of.
Yet I keep over eating.
My gluttony goes on unabated just because I’m too lazy, or selfish to do something about it.
Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself.
If I ‘love’ myself so much that I feed myself every time I get the slightest hint that my stomach might not be completely full, do I love my neighbor enough to feed him every time he gets the same feeling?
Probably not.
I have much to learn, a lot of growing to do, and not in the stomach department!
A couple of ways to help:
Free Rice
Free Flour
Also, keep gift cards to places offering fairly nutritious food (Subway, Chick-fil-A, etc.) in your wallet for people who are begging for money.
It’s a start.
Thanks for those links, Vanity.
I should have included them in the article!
Carrying gift cards is a great idea, I used to do it and really ought to do it more!
Thanks for the challenge on this … we get so comfortable in our own little worlds that we sometimes forget the things in this world that make us uncomfortable.
Blessings
Met a guy here in Honduras a couple of years ago this week. I was taking a friend with me to tell this little old guy that he was going to get a new house in a couple of days. I told my friend that we needed to look around to see if the old guy had any food – we would go to the store and buy some if he didn’t. Long story – short, we didn’t see any food so I asked him if he had anything to eat. Thinking that we were hungry, the old man pulled out his only food – a small piece of cornbread and broke it in half so that my friend and I could eat. If we all had a willingness to share – even if it is the only thing we have, then the hunger issue would dissolve before our eyes! Be a blessing to somebody today.
Wow Marc,
People who actually know what hunger and poverty are really put the rest of us to shame with their selflessness and generosity.
Thank you for sharing this.
I always think of it like I think of the movie Shawshank Redemption. Like you know how the guy asks to buy the little hammer thing from Morgan Freeman and he asks “are you going to break out of jail with that thing? It will take you a lifetime.” But he starts to write his name on the wall with it, and little by little the wall starts to crumble and all of a sudden a great big hole is there to crawl out of there. It only took him 20 years or something. I know our we aren’t living in a movie, but I do know that small and consistent steps get us results and when we look back we will have seen people being fed and lives being changed.
I’m thinking most of the other six billion of us on the planet all need to see this post.
🙂 Thanks Anne!