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I just had the opportunity to go to the most amazing college ever for the weekend: Ozark Christian College. It's located in Joplin, MO, and it's completely centered around God. Everyone there is totally amazing, and all the professors there always blow me away with how much they know about and love God. I went with my church (which consisted of Me, my sister, my mom, and two other girls. Normally there's more that come.. I don't know why they didn't this time!) for a high school retreat called "The Event". Pretty creative name, huh? The whole topic for the weekend was "Your World". It was all about the world we live in, how we treat it and the people in it. We learned about how we live in so much excess, and there are people around the world that have absolutely nothing.
When you think about it, we do live in a lot of excess. Think of all the food we throw away:
This is a diagram of how much food the average American family of four in 1995 wastes every month. It's ridiculous! That's enough food to feed Whole villages in Africa for a week! The average amount of food thrown away by a family of four is 122 pounds per month. 6.4 billion pounds of edible food was wasted in 1995--about 1 pound per person! That's edible food. Think of all the Chinese buffets and fast food restaurants that throw hundreds of pounds of food away a day. With just the United States' waste, we could feed whole countries. For reals.
And think about us. We're always wanting something more... some toy (like a MacBook for me), clothes, house, boat, car, etc. WE LIVE IN EXCESS! It's ridiculous when you think about it.
So, I know that there are people around the world that are starving and don't have homes, but the problem for me is: I don't want to give up my stuff. I'd rather forget about the starving little African children and buy my MacBook. We'd--I'd--just rather tuck the problem away and forget about it. They can have their little corner of the world and we can have ours. Let's just forget about it, right? *Errrrrrrrrrrrrr!!* (Haha... that's a buzzer) WRONG! I admit, it would be nice, but we can't. What if your family was starving? You'd think people were just downright selfish for buying a MacBook instead of saving your family.
But the great thing is that there are orginizations like World Vision (as you probably already know) where you can sponsor a child right from the comfort of your home. And it's really cool, because you can send letters to your sponsored child and they send you letters back! It takes a super long time, but you can still communicate with them.
I'm not saying that you can't but that MacBook (or whatever your heart desires), just spend a little time, money, and thought on others. You'll be glad you did. :)
