A Choice

It is easy for the numbers and statistics regarding the poor and needy to seem cold and distant. The idea of billions in poverty or twenty-six thousand children dying from salvation or preventable disease before we lay our head on our pillows tonight seems hard to imagine......

But everything changed when we made our first trip to the orphanage in Kazakhstan. We saw children playing outside. We walked past their rooms inside. Suddenly those numbers on a page came alive in our hearts.....

We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.

So when you and I hear staggering numbers and statistics about the poor and needy around us and around the world, we have a choice. We can switch the channels on our mega-TVs and continue our comfortable, untroubled, ordinary, churchgoing lives as if the global poor don't exist. We can let there numbers remain cold, distant, and almost imaginary. Or we can open our eyes and our lives to the realities that surround us and begin considering the faces that are represented by these numbers.

As I see their faces, I realize that I have a choice. You and I both have a choice.

We can stand with the starving or with the overfed.

We can identify with poor Lazarus on his way to heaven or with the rich man on his way to hell.

We can embrace Jesus while we give away our wealth, or we can walk away from Jesus while we hoard our wealth.

Only time will tell what you and I choose to do with this blind spot of American Christinaity in our day.

(excerpt from Radical: Taking back your faith from the American Dream By: Dr.David Platt)