Photography by Benjamin Clyde

World hunger.   Human trafficking.  Death by water borne diseases.  AIDS.  Poverty.  
We live in an amazing world.  Huge rivers and lakes, teeming with fish;  wide open pastures full of livestock; miles and miles of fresh green vegetables and tree after tree of luscious sweet juicy fruit.  Mines full of precious treasure and raw minerals.  Six point eight billion people.  According to statistics, over 1.1 billion have no access to clean water; 1.2 billion of these people do not have enough to eat.  Some live down the street from you. 

If you ever fasted for just 24 hours, you know that your stomach soon starts to grumble and ache.  You start to obsess about food.  It's difficult to concentrate on anything else.  You begin to feel weak and listless, maybe even headache-y.   If this continues over a period of time, your resistance to disease goes down.  Your body, wondrous creation that it is, cannot do what it was designed to do.  What if you felt like that all day every day with no end in sight?  What if you had to watch your children suffer like that?

Malnutrition causes physical and mental development problems.  These problems contribute to a lack in ability to learn or  work.  They put a burden on society.  They invite corrupt governments to make promises that they have no intention of keeping.  These corrupt governments exploit their people and use the statistics about poverty and disease to get aid from other countries, but very often (most often, in my opinion) the people with the needs never see one penny of this aid.  The people in poor countries are then left to their own devices to eek out a meager living to try to feed their families.  Many of these countries have an average family income of $200-300 a year, less than a family on welfare in the states receives in a month.

We watch the news.  We feel sorry for the poor.  But we have our own problems.  As we become immersed in those problems, it is easy to become distracted and put pity on the back burner.  Fact is:  Pity doesn't do anything anyway, except make you feel weak and guilty, while at the same time maintaining a sense that you are superior.  "Poor thing.  tch, tch, tch."  So, obviously pity is not the answer.

The truth is that because we are all connected on some level, when someone is starving, we are starving.  When someone is sick, we are sick.  When someone is exploited, we are exploited.  When anyone else hurts, we hurt.  We may have programmed our souls not to feel that or to excuse it away, but I believe that it is a fundamental truth.  I believe it could possibly be one reason why so many suffer from depression and other disorders.  We begin to look in instead of out.  We think we are separate and isolated, so we feel lonely.  We come to believe that it's us against the world, so we put up our defenses and hide away.  We look at our own meager incomes and think we have nothing to share.  So we sock it away.  We become so weary that we also forget that we have talents and skills and ideas to share that could possibly even save someone's life!  We feel imprisoned by our own circumstances and problems.  So often we watch the news and wish we could do something, but the world is so big and the problems are so overwhelming and we feel helpless to do anything.  We feel weak.

Robert Frost hit the nail on the head when he said, "Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found out that it was ourselves."    The only way to free ourselves is to free others.  If I am one with God and you are one with God, then so are those starving in Africa;  so are the exploited in Cambodia; so are the oppressed in Afghanistan; and so is the poor person down the street.  We don't have to go far to find our freedom, but we do have to come out of our fearful shells of self protection and take a risk. 

We are entering the season for giving.  Ho! Ho! Ho!  There are a whole lot of people not laughing.

Is it within the realm of possibility that we could actually change the world, one person at a time?  We will never know until we try.  What if everyone shared something with someone in need?  What about even challenging ourselves to do this every day?  The resources of the world are more than enough to feed each person.  This, however, cannot be legislated.  We cannot be forced to share our wealth.  That has never worked and it won't work now.  It has to come from within.  As you gain the awareness that you breathe the same breath from the same source as an AIDS orphan in Malawi, you will come to realize that his salvation is truly yours, and the answer might just lie with you.

Below are a couple of places where you can begin to become informed and get empowered to help.  I personally endorse both of these sites, but there are many, many more, probably even including a local Food Pantry in your own community!
www.wrgnews.com
www.worldhope.org

Here's to your freedom, as you set others free!
www.marianneclyde.com