A perspective on "enough": Wants, Needs, and Excess.

This weekend at VCC, we were blessed to have the President and CEO of Compassion International, Wess Stafford, as our guest speaker. Read our teaching pastor's blog about it by clicking here. It was an incredibly moving story.

What struck me the most is that we were talking about how $38/month can literally change the life of a child living in poverty. It is the difference between life and death, for many of them. We've all seen these commercials and many of us view them as a nuisance. I used to...until I heard and saw on video the stories of adults who were sponsored as children and have now grown up and are working on their Masters degrees. I heard the story of a little boy who had such a low self-worth that his first letter read simply, "You can see from my picture that I am not a good-looking boy." Twenty years later, he visited his sponsor on the way back from winning a medal at the Olympics.

The part about the $38/month that struck me the most is that I am paying $160/week to lose weight because I ate to excess.

Boom.

I could sponsor 17 kids for that. At what point did our society change so that America was no longer the land of the free, but the home of the obese? Think about this: because of my "stresses" and the availability of fatty, sugary, processed foods, I was able to eat my way to 350 pounds. At the same time, over 5,000 children under the age of five die in Africa every day due to malnutrition, disease and violence, almost all of them preventable.

Talk about perspective. These children don't get clean water, let alone food. They're lucky if they eat once per day. There were times in my twenties when I would binge eat by going through a drive-thru, eating while I drive, then going through another drive-thru when I was done with the food from the first.

I won't feel guilty...I didn't know. As I got older, I knew that there was suffering, but it's easy to ignore. "They're on the other side of the globe. I don't need to worry about it." Now, as I mature in my relationship with Christ, and as a father myself, my global view is also maturing.

What we have here on earth is not our's. If I have "enough" and someone else wants, who am I do buy more and more? Now, I know that God wants to bless us and that I shouldn't sell all of my possessions and move to South Africa. However, when making a purchase from now on, I will definitely ask myself, "Is this too much?"

Also, when I'm done with my program....I'll be sponsoring a couple of children.