“Some experts say to completely solve global hunger would cost about thirty billion dollars a year. Americans spend more than that each year on pizza.”
A thought by Darren Whitehead and Jon Tyson (2011-07-19)
in their book, Rumors of God: Experience the Kind of Faith You´ve Only Heard About (Kindle Locations 531-532).
Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
We
really don’t appreciate the problem of hunger do we? I know I don’t. I think I do but I really don’t. I may be hungry so I get up and go into our
kitchen and find something to eat or I dial my phone to get a pizza. I don’t really know about being hungry.
It comes down to the fact
that we don’t have a food problem but a sharing problem.
Have you heard the story
about TOMS Shoes? I got a pair for my
birthday. I love them. TOMS Shoes is a
unique company founded in 2006 by Blake
Mycoskie. While competing on
the second season of The Amazing Race with
his sister, Mycoskie visited Argentina. He returned there on vacation in
January 2006 and had the idea to develop a shoe company where for every pair sold,
a new pair would be donated to a child in need of shoes. Blake
had once said of his revelation, "I was sitting on a farm pondering life,
and it occurred to me, ’I’m going to start a shoe company, and for every pair
that we sell, I'll give a pair to someone who needs them.’“ After Mycoskie
noticed the numerous children without shoes in the poorer villages, he returned
to the United States and sold his online driver education company
to self-finance the shoe company
Blake saw a problem and did
something about it. He didn’t just start
a company to take care of his wants and needs but to help those without shoes
who are in deep need.
In my last years of pastoring
before retirement I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada and had a deep burden to help
people who were going through difficult times; especially families whose
children were going hungry. So I went
to the schools in our area and asked them if we could help. I asked about those boys and girls who the
school helped in providing breakfast and lunch five days a week and I said we
wanted to help them on the weekend. I went
and bought cases of backpacks and filled each one of them with enough
non-perishable food for the weekend and delivered them to the school each Friday
so the kids could take them home. We put
the food in backpacks so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. We found we could help a child in need for
$10.00 a week. We couldn’t solve the
whole problem but we could help one kid at a time.
$10.00 is the price of one pizza.
We each one can make a difference in the
life of at least one child. Why don’t you find some group that is on the front
lines in meeting the needs of those who are hungry? Many times
we make a great effort at Thanksgiving to help people who are hungry and forget
that they are hungry everyday of their lives.
Yes hunger is a major problem
but we can each one of us make a major difference in someone’s life.
So what are you going to do?
I've heard of TOMS Shoes before. I think it's quite a beautiful thing, what he's done.
ReplyDeleteThere are 7 billion people in the world at the moment. If we are to assume that half that number are adults (or ages 16 and up+) who have access to some sort of cash flow or they have some kind of job, couldn't each person of that 3.5 billion donate a dollar/yen/euro/pound/etc to some kind of charity? Even if only a billion people donated one dollar each, that is still a billion dollars to put to some good cause. Why isn't there anything like this in the world? Why are people do hesitant to donate a dollar?
Your post is very thought provoking. It really puts things into perspective, doesn't it?
Thank you so much for your comment, Joanna.
ReplyDelete