So here is the newest blurb to be making it's way around Facebook:
"Doesn't make much sense does it? Homeless go without eating. Elderly go without medication. Mentally ill go without treatment. Troops go without proper equipment. Veterans go without benefits they were promised. Yet we donate billions to other countries before helping our own first. Charity starts at home. 1% will repost this and 99% will not. I know I'm one of those 1%."
No, it doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense that I can ask someone to help a little child and they tell me they can't afford to, and then go drop $40 (more than the cost of helping that child, by the way) on one dinner at Chili's.
It doesn't make sense that it takes us, as Americans, the most prosperous people in the world, years to decide if God is calling us to do anything --- adopt, missions work, sponsorship, etc. But it takes usually less than a week to decide to purchase a new car.
It doesn't make sense that children in this country feel slighted if they only have a Playstation 2 while their friends have all moved on to an XBox. While children in another country are digging through a trash dump to find a rotten banana to have as their meal for the entire day.
It doesn't make sense that my children can play in the shower until all the hot water is used up, while children in another country are bathing in sewage.
It doesn't make sense that I can pay $4 for a case of clean water out of plastic bottles anytime I want and children in another country are dipping those same, but filthy bottles, in brown, bacteria- laden water just to have something to drink.
It doesn't make sense that international adoptions are even needed, that we are spending massive amounts of money, because the mother of my daughter could no longer afford to feed her or care for her. And there are no governmental programs like foster care, Medicaid, or WIC to help her. It doesn't make sense a mother would have to tear a child away from her breast, just to give her the chance to continue to take a breath.
And yet we have the right to complain, while we live in the most blessed country to have ever graced this planet? God has blessed America with more provisions than we could ever possibly use. And is there waste? Yes. And is there government mismanagement of money? Yes. Should the elderly, homeless, and veterans be taken care of? Of course. But out of that 1% that are posting the above on Facebook - how many of those are actually getting their hands dirty in a soup kitchen? feeding programs for the elderly? Surely they are all giving sacrificially to charity close to home???? Most aren't helping much in their own backyard, "yet we donate billions to other countries before helping our own first."My problem is with the last line - as if being a citizen of this country should make us any better than those living in a third world country, many whose countries have no infrastructure or economic means to even help themselves. Corruption is everywhere, but there ARE good organizations which are doing great things that you could stand beside.
Where you live should not determine IF you live. 22,000 children will die, just today. And those on Facebook think it doesn't make sense we may be helping the other ones struggling to survive?
Out of what we, as Christians, are given - BY GOD - as everything we have is given to us BY HIM - Christians tithe an average of 1% of our income. Lower than even during the Depression.
And of that 1% we generously give - churches then distribute 1% of that to missions. The rest is used for church up-keep, paving parking lots, programs for our children. So 99% comes back to us generous Christians in the form of feeding our souls.
So 1% of 1% goes to the very commandment that Jesus gave in Matthew 10:42 to take care of his little ones. It doesn't make sense does it??
