Money Post (Pt 3)

There are some things we need, some things that are nice to have, and everything else are just wants. Food and water those are necessary, we need them to live. Shelter – a home – that’s nice to have, but not a necessity necessarily. Then there’s all the stuff to go in the house, all of that is socially dictated by the culture you’re in. Beds in India are floors sometimes. Kitchens in Egypt are sparse. Showers in Uganda are rivers.

Food – God will give us our daily bread. Water – there are people screaming out in hell for a drop on their ravaged tongues and it not only drizzles on us here in America, but it floods from the skies at times. Are you getting it? What you need has been provided in abundance here in America. The “Inequality of Wealth” we’re talking about is the ability or inability to get horribly made pieces of wood and ceramic at a store to stick on a wall and smile at once! We’re whining at the fact that someone’s grass is greener than ours! We’re discontented children screaming that their ice cream is bigger than ours.

“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

A point here: Jesus didn’t instruct us to pray for tomorrow’s food and sins, he told us to pray for today’s. The troubles of today are enough in themselves, let tomorrow worry about its problems. If God gives us food for the week he has taken care of today’s bread issues and given more than we need. Anything you have beyond today is icing on the cake, cause only the Lord knows whether or not you’re even going to live to use that icing.

(Also, a thought, God dictates what we need and don't need. He gives life and he takes life away. If what you need is to experience the fullness of God without shadow or veil - he gracously gives you death. So to say water and food are necessary, God defines what is neceassry and what is lifegiving.)

My Past

I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing lately. Remembering things I’ve done and places I’ve been in contrast to where and who I am now.

Typically I don’t look back. (but I may try to forget some things, but even those things are daring to be remembered too.)

Red Lobster, that’s where it began. Eating a lovely meal with grandma. Thinking, “Tables were never this clean in Egypt and food was never this good in Uganda.” Seeing, in stark contrast mind you, the difference from where I was and where I am.

That’s where many of my thoughts have been lately.

There’s a dirty and bland world out there. There are starving children and kids with AK-47’s killing each other and their families. There are women dying in the streets far away from their home. And a man with one hand no lips, no eyes, and acid burns on his face begging for money in a dank corner of a Ugandan market.

We’d consider it out-of-control, they’d consider it normal.

Egypt I loved, Uganda scared me, Israel was homely, Amsterdam was crazy, and Frankfurt was too short.

This isn’t a list of credentials to be read and envied. It’s not a look-at-me-I’m-better-than-you-cause-I-traveled list. It’s just a dude remembering how good we’ve got it here in, “no-where,” Wichita, Kansas.

We can drink the water in the showers, and brush our teeth from faucet water and not a bottle. We all (for the most part) have cars (no matter how crappy they are). Houses, safety, and pets we don’t have to eat.

No-where Wichita seems like a vacation compared to war-torn Africa. #justsaying