I have been home for a week now – good on many levels. A joyful 50th birthday celebration for a dear friend just hours after I got home, delightful Elliott time, family time, some coffee breaks with people dear to me, starting to whip the garden back into shape. All meaningful things – but there is that other life and other place where life is simpler, more basic, and people have time because relationships are paramount. I don’t want to get sucked back into an American life where my priorities for the day are working out, sitting in the sun, eating some good food, drinking some good coffee and attempting to look good at my advanced age! None of these things
are bad in themselves but there is so much more. I want to live a
heroic life filled with purpose and being God’s with every breath.
There are so very many distractions from that goal – many of them
good things but are they God’s things? I want to be uncomfortable
and always know that while I am thoroughly enjoying fellowship with
dear ones, much of the world is hungry and hurting. I want to be
ever grateful for my incredible life and ever mindful of the
responsibility I have before God to be of use. What that will look
like, I don’t know. Much prayer and thought need to go into it.
Some of you may have seen the following but I want to include it. It helps me keep perspective.
If we could shrink the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it
would look something like the following: There would be 57 Asians;
21 Europeans; 14 from the Western hemisphere, both north and
south; 8 Africans. 52 would be female; 48 would be male. 70 would
be non-white; 30 would be white. 70 would be non-Christian; 30
would be Christian. 6 people would possess 59% of the entire
world’s wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States. 80 would
live in substandard housing; 70 would be unable to read; 50 would
suffer from malnutrition; 1 would be near death; 1 would be near
birth; 1 would have a college education; 1 would own a computer.
And what does the Lord require of me? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.
