And the people of Israel also began to complain. “Oh, for some meat!” they exclaimed. “We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted. [Numbers 11:4b-5 (NLT)]
It’s a matter of perspective. When in Egypt, the Israelites hated being slaves to their cruel masters yet, every time they faced danger or difficulty, they longed to return there. This past March, my Florida friends wore gloves, jackets, and hats and complained of the cold when the temperature fell to 60 degrees. That same month, we were in the mountains of Colorado. When it got to 60 degrees there, off came the hats, gloves and jackets and people ate outside! Yesterday, my mother-in-law commented on the unseasonable heat in Illinois—it was 80 degrees! On the other hand, when it only got to 80 here in Florida, the weatherman called it “unseasonably cool.” It’s a matter of perspective.
“I’m starving!” we say when it’s been several hours since last eating, yet one in nine people suffer from chronic undernourishment. Truly starving, they may not even remember when last they ate anything. We complain about waiting thirty minutes in the physician’s waiting room, yet more than 1 billion people around the world have no access to health care. They’d gladly sit there for days if it meant getting medical attention. Weighing less than 93-pounds and standing less than 58-inches, my healthy and active 12-year old grand is called “small” for his age. In Africa or Asia, where nearly 51 million children are stunted in growth, he’d be the big kid in his class. Our well will be chlorinated this month and we’re annoyed about not having any water for several hours. A day’s inconvenience every few years sounds wonderful to those 663 million people have no access at all to safe drinking water. We women complain about the long lines in public restrooms yet one in three people lack access to any toilet, let alone the ten stalls at the theater! It’s just a matter of perspective.
A website called the Global Rich List puts one’s financial wealth in perspective. For example, here in the US, if you earned the median income of $51,939, you are in the top .28% of global wealth (note that decimal point)! While you’re not likely to see your name in Forbes magazine, that makes you the 16,839,173rd richest person on earth! Indeed, it is all a matter of perspective and, sometimes, we lose ours completely!
Father, forgive us when we look at life merely from our viewpoint—when we only notice or care about what directly touches our lives. Give us a global perspective so that we see the world from your viewpoint, not ours. Help us remember that the Good News is more than just your good word; it is also our good works! We have a world in need of both your message and our compassion. You have a world-sized role of each one of us—show us what you want us to do and how you want us to do it.
When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. [Mother Teresa]
As I picked up another starfish and tossed it back into the water, I thought of Loren Eiseley’s essay about saving starfish and making a difference in people’s lives, one life at a time. Remembering Eiseley’s essay got me thinking about an announcement made last week at Bible study. While a local family was driving home from church last Easter, a driver sped through a red light, t-boned their car, and changed their lives forever. Their two small children were seriously injured and one, a three-year old girl, was airlifted to another town. On life support for about a month, her injuries left her a quadriplegic. Now four, this sweet little girl has more surgeries and months (if not years), of medical, physical and occupational therapies ahead of her. Meanwhile, her family struggles with mounting medical expenses. Although the family does not attend our church, their need came to the attention of our pastor. Being restricted to a wheelchair has kept this little girl and her family from their favorite Florida activity—going to the beach. Since the wheels of a normal wheelchair would sink in the sand, family beach time has been just a memory until now. Yesterday, along with a sizeable check to help with their expenses, our church presented them with a sturdy all-terrain beach wheelchair. This vehicle enables her not just to go to the beach but also to go into the ocean and play in the water once again.
With their huge medical bills and needs, the $2,200 spent on a wheelchair may seem a little frivolous—but not to a four-year-old girl who had given up all hope of ever going to the beach or feeling the waves again! There are some people who will analyze how many mission trips, meals, blankets, immunizations, medicines, bricks, or Bibles could have been purchased with that same amount of money. They may disagree with how the church spent our tithes and offerings. Without a doubt, there is a tremendous need in our world for just the bare necessities of clean water, food, shelter, and health care. Sometimes, however, a need is right in front of us—a need to make life a little easier for a neighbor, a need to bring some joy back to a family or to put a smile back on a child’s face. Sometimes what seems extravagant to someone is a necessity to another—a great wig or a day at the spa for a woman with breast cancer, a davit that allows a paraplegic man to get into his boat again, skiing on a sit-ski for a wounded warrior who’s lost his legs, a week of summer camp for a teen with diabetes, a weekend at Disney for a child with leukemia, a trip to the Super Bowl for a boy with cystic fibrosis, or even a teddy bear for a tot recovering from heart surgery.
Devotions of the Heart 