Give freely and spontaneously. Don’t have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers God, your God’s, blessing in everything you do, all your work and ventures. There are always going to be poor and needy people among you. So I command you: Always be generous, open purse and hands, give to your neighbors in trouble, your poor and hurting neighbors. [Deuteronomy 15:10-11 (MSG)]

We recently celebrated my mother-in-law’s 98th birthday; how blessed we are that she is still spry and alert. Since my husband’s father lived until the age of ninety-six and many of his other relatives lived well into their nineties, we were curious about his life expectancy. According to an on-line calculation, it’s likely my seventy-one year old spouse will live until he’s at least ninety; he has a 25% chance of living beyond ninety-five. That’s not as old as Methuselah, Abraham, or Jacob, but he probably has several good years ahead. Clearly, he comes from good genes. Those long and healthy life spans, however, are probably due more to an accident of birth: he and his family were born in the right place. Living in one of the wealthiest nations in the world, even during difficult times, they were never without shelter, safe water, enough food, or good medical care. Unfortunately, that’s not true for many children today, even children in our own country.

Granted, if we lived in Monaco, Switzerland or even Canada, my husband’s life expectancy would be even higher. If, however, he was born today in sub-Sahara Africa, he could expect to live only forty-seven years. If, by good fortune, he’d made it into his sixties, he certainly wouldn’t have gotten that heart stent a few years back, so I would probably be widowed by now. If we lived in a third world country, other members of my family would also be missing. Grandma most certainly would never have lived this long. If she’d survived giving birth, surely her asthma, heart attack, stroke, broken bones, and abscessed teeth would have caused her demise. A granddaughter would be absent as well. She’s alive today only because of the surgical intervention of pediatric cardiologists; she wouldn’t have had that kind of care in a developing country. Then again, she might never have been born if her mother hadn’t survived a bout of pneumonia as a girl, something made possible with a simple regimen of antibiotics, so plentiful here and so rare elsewhere. Another grandchild and her mother probably wouldn’t have survived childbirth without the emergency Caesarian section that made a safe birth possible. Of course, that’s assuming my son lived long enough to become a father, something that wouldn’t have happened without the lifesaving surgery for a ruptured spleen he had several years earlier. In many parts of the world, he would have died from internal bleeding. The bout of diarrhea that landed one of my babies in the hospital and on IVs would have been fatal in places like Sierra Leone or Chad. Of course, all this assumes that my husband and I could have lived long enough to have children. Because of readily available medical care and good nutrition, we easily survived bouts of the flu, measles, mumps, chicken pox, strep and other assorted infections and diseases. In a developing country, that wouldn’t have been the case. Because of immunizations, my children and grands, unlike so many children in the third world, will never even have most of those illnesses.

I apologize for moving from the joyful celebration of a birthday to such depressing thoughts. As Christians, however, we can’t turn away from the facts simply because they are unpleasant. It is horrifying that more than 20,000 children die each and every day from the silent killers of poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and related causes. One child dies every four seconds; that’s over 7 million deaths a year, with the vast majority occurring in sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia. More than a quarter of all children in developing countries are underdeveloped or stunted; they simply don’t have enough to eat. Add malnutrition to the lack of shelter, medical care and safe water, and you have the recipe for disaster. As Christians, we must take notice. As Christians, we must do something.

Father, forgive us when we turn away from unpleasant truths. Don’t let us take the blessings of shelter, food, clean water, and health care for granted. Guide us as we prayerfully consider what it is we can do to improve the lives of our brothers and sisters both here and abroad. Don’t let us stop at prayer, Lord; empower us to act on your behalf.

If you stop your ears to the cries of the poor, your cries will go unheard, unanswered. [Proverbs 21:13 (MSG)]

Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless. [Isaiah 1:17 (MSG)]