This is the question I can’t stop thinking about.
Why does North America have so much, while the rest of the world has so little?
The little trip my hubby and I took at the beginning of the month wasn’t a romantic getaway. It was an informational meeting with an amazing Christian charity that works in Africa. We wanted to learn more and we did. We don’t know if we have a future with this group, but we are asking God and we’re trying to be patient.
In one of the sessions, they had every person take a colored piece of paper from a closed box. Our classroom was divided into groups based on our colored slips of paper. The medium-sized groups with 10 or more people signified the countries with world’s most wealth, America one of them.
In the far corner of the room, sat the group with the smallest amount of wealth: Africa, a continent with more than a billion people with the smallest amount of money per capita in the world.
It was shocking to see the room divided so unfairly and heartbreaking to know that this wasn’t a game. It was real.
Why is America so blessed? What are we to do with our wealth? We are a nation possessed with achieving more and more and more. I know no one likes these kind of questions. They make us feel uncomfortable. I have always thought that every pay raise, every unexpected check in the mail, every extra in my life was God’s blessing. God’s blessing for me. Now, I’m not so sure. Why would God want me to have more and more and MORE, while so many have nothing?
Every good gift comes from God above, but gifts are meant to be given.
Right?
I received this comment yesterday and thought it was thought-provoking: “Yesterday I read a post on Get Rich Slowly about how frugality is great, but really there’s nothing wrong with buying lots of nice things for yourself as long as you can really afford them. When I’d finished the article, I thought, “Is there no room for giving in this?” I believe there IS something wrong with lots of spending, even if I can “afford” it. Because maybe I have what I have not because I earned it, but because God blessed me with it. And maybe He expects me to share it, even just a little. But probably a lot.”
Why do you think America is so blessed?
Is it so we can build a greater country or is it for us to help that poor continent and others like it in the corner of the room and make HIS glory known?
