Racism, starving children, and human trafficking...I went there.

Recently I was asked the question what gets your heart racing what are you most passionate about? The point of the question was to try and discover what makes you as a daughter of Christ unique, with the end question being how can you use your unique talents and gifts to serve Christ and serve others.

My easy go to answer was that I am passionate about my children, parenting them, raising them, teaching them everything from tying their shoes to what it means to love and follow Jesus. Well of course I am passionate about my kids, MOST moms are. But then I thought about it for the rest of the day and night. I began to really search my heart. I did two things to try and discover what my talents, gifts and passions are, I first asked my mom. She is the one person who has known me since birth (obviously) has seen my good and bad sides and has watched me grow up. Her insight was such a blessing for me to hear. The next thing I did was go to God in prayer and open His Word.  My prayer is that I would be passionate about the things that Jesus is passionate about. He took me to the story of Jesus feeding the crowds that came to listen to him speak. Most of us have heard the story of Jesus feeding over 5,000 people with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread. Why did Jesus feed these people, why didn't he just send them on their way to eat on their own? 

I looked into some verses on what the Bible says about feeding the hungry and caring for the poor. Here are just a few:

Proverbs 14:31 (ESV)

Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him. 

Proverbs 22:9 (ESV)
Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.

Proverbs 28:27 (ESV)
Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.

Isaiah 58:10 (ESV)
If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

1 John 3:17-18 (ESV)
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.

Jesus is compassionate for the poor and the hungry. He cares about people's EVERY need, not just their spiritual need. Because we do not SEE people who are truly starving and hungry everyday it is very easy to forget that world hunger is a HUGE issue. I read an article that stated that "The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of $240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over," (www.rt.com) 

When I think about what God sees looking down at the world he created and the HUGE imbalance that there is, I am ashamed. A quick search online informed me that taking care of the poor is mentioned in some form 300 times in the Bible. Why are we not listening?

Recently I watched the movie Lee Daniels The Butler, I highly recommend this movie. But as I sat there watching this movie and seeing the real footage of white people beating black people to death and setting them on fire and acting so crazy, in the 1960s for the simple reason that they were a different color as them, I had to ask the question WHAT was being taught in the church during those times? What were people doing to stop this insane unbiblical behavior. Did they just not read the Bible? Did they not read the story of Jesus talking to the women at the well who was a Samaritan and he a Jew? Jesus didn't care that in their culture Jews and Samaritans were not to speak to each other. Did they not read the part in Galatians where it says "There is neither Jew nor Greek, their is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all ONE in Christ Jesus." Or in Romans 2:11 when is says "God shows no partiality". 

The gospel is all about loving your neighbor, and that we are ALL created in Gods image. It just blows my mind that so many people sat and did nothing while this was going on.

So my question then turned to, so what is it now in our generation. What awful crisis is happening right under our noses that we are sitting by and doing nothing about. 

Two BIG issues came to my mind. 

The first, people that die everyday because they simply don't have clean water or anything to eat. The second one is the thousands of girls and women who are being beaten and abused into slavery every day.

God help us if we sit by and let this go on and do absolutely nothing about it in our lifetime. God help us if our goal in life is to have the perfect family, the perfect house ,the perfect car, the perfect vacation and think about me, me, me while this is happening all around us.

These issues are so big and so overwhelming that a lot of us have used that as an excuse to do nothing. But what IF, we all did a something? What if we all sponsored a child, or gave money to the many great organizations who are on the front lines of fighting these issues or better yet joined them! $35 dollars sponsors a child through Food for the Hungry which will provide medical help, clean water, food and education for one child. That to us is sacrificing one dinner out a month.

I know that I am opening a can of worms, I know that we have heard the horrific stories of human trafficking and starving dying children. But oh how easily and quickly we can forget. 

My prayer is that we would be an active generation who does not sit by and let this continue without a fight. I DO NOT want my grandchildren to read about the 1 in 5 children who die in Africa because they are starving or the 8 year old girl who was sold into years of sexual slavery and for them to say grandma what were you doing when this was happening? How could you bare it? and then for my answer to be well, I was too busy worrying about myself and enjoying all that I had to care about them.  I can just see the look of disgust on their face. I know I am dreaming big when I say this, but my prayer is that we will ALL be able to tell them I didn't sit by, I fought, I prayed and we ended it through nothing else but the help of God Almighty!