Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Remembering this Bleeding World

“Would you please pass the potatoes?”

Your friend complies, staring hungrily as the bowl of creamy potatoes leaves his hands.

From his chair across the table, he watches you eat. First the mashed potatoes. Then the croissant. Then the delicately marinated steak. Finally, he watches, puzzled, as you scrape the green beans around on your plate. Closing your eyes and holding your nose, you manage to stuff a couple of the green beans down.

It’s not that your friend isn’t hungry. He wants to eat. Only, he can’t, because he is without food.

About 24,000 people die of hunger-related problems each day. The problem feels distant, perhaps because of the thousands of miles stretching between our dinner tables and the slums of Haiti or the tsunami swept villages of Myanmar, but the problem is no less for the distance.

Today is the date of the fast, initiated by Compassion International, to bring attention to the global food crisis. The fast is meant to also be an encouragement to those Christians suffering from the food crisis, letting them know that their siblings in America are lifting them up in prayer. Reading about this fast, I am struck by two realizations:

One, as an American Christian, I’m so disconnected from the daily difficulties my brothers and sisters in Christ face across the world. While my parents have always tried to make us kids understand that picky eating is a form of selfishness, I do have the luxury of choosing what I want for lunch from a full kitchen cabinet. I’m inconvenienced if I’m craving tuna salad and can’t find any in the kitchen. Others count themselves blessed to have a bowl of rice. Even beyond food, I don’t understand other very real threats—such as persecution and imprisonment for my faith. Those things are incomprehensible.

Two, I realize how little I do to help. E-mail newsletters arrive in my inbox nearly every day, keeping me up to date on Gospel work in India, needs in Myanmar, and a note from a friend reminds me of world hunger. But what do I do?

Of course, if one of those starving people were sitting at my dinner table, I’d remember to feed them, right? I couldn’t just let them miserably watch me eat, could I? Of course, I’d pass them a plate and pile the mashed potatoes high.

If so, why do I allow a few longitude lines on a map stop me from helping them now? Because unless a starving person is sitting across the table from me, I am prone to forget starvation exists.

Hebrews 13:3 says “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” That verse was written for people like me, saying, “Remember! Don’t forget those people, even if you don’t see them on a daily basis. Remember their problems. Share in their sufferings!”

I’m reminded of what Rich Mullins once wrote: “…[T]he other side of the world is not so far away. The distance just dissolves into the love.” So let us remember. Prayer is meaningful and donations can provide aid, when compassion bridges the distance for us to remember to love.

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