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About two months ago I was hanging out with two friends (one male, one female). It was late and we had spent the afternoon swimming and laying by the pool. As the hour grew later and later, our conversation grew more serious. We were discussing our jobs and comparing experiences. We all work with children in high poverty areas and we were talking about some of the things we had seen that shocked and saddened us. That's when my guy friend said something that I will never forget.
For you to understand the conversation it is important for me to give you a little background on the three of us so you get where we are coming from. As y'all probably know by now I grew up in a rural small town in the South. My family struggled financially at times growing up but we always had food on the table and everything we needed. My parents are happily married and I was always surrounded by loving family. My other friend in this conversation was a young woman who grew up in midtown Atlanta. She came from a middle class family but she saw the poverty of the inner city every day and her parents had gone through a brutal divorce while she was quite young. My guy friend grew up in a farm town and had a financially stable though rough emotionally family situation. Right out of college he went to live in South East Asia for two years doing humanitarian work. As you can tell, we all came from different places with quite different experiences... But we all noticed something that only my guy friend was brave enough to address.
So here we were-- sitting on the back deck after dinner, sitting by the pool just talking. As we were talking about the kids we worked with and the things we saw my guy friend looked up and with a crack in his voice said the words I will never forget
How do you handle looking into the eyes of those kids who are living in situations we can't imagine and keep yourself from wondering "Why me? Why did I get so blessed and you get so little?"
Boom. Truth.
Most of the kids we work with come from single parent homes (if even that sometimes)and most of them are on some form of government assistance. A lot of those kids come from long histories of abuse, neglect and abandonment. We spend all day with those kids, trying to help them in any way we can but at the end of the day, we go home in our own cars to our own homes to cook dinner for our families. The kids we work with do not have those same blessings.
Maybe it hit us so hard because we see it with kids every day, but lets get real... those kids grow up and the cycle continues.
My friends words have been echoing in my mind and I've been wrestling with them... trying to come up with some sort of answer. I know I do not deserve my blessings... that's what makes them blessings... but why me? Does God just love me more than that starving child in Cambodia or that man dying of a easily curable disease in Uganda or that woman sold into a human trafficking ring in South America? OF COURSE NOT. So why is it that I live comfortably in a nice home and have multiple college degrees and can cook whatever I want for dinner and not worry if I won't be able to eat tomorrow.
WHY?
Why wouldn't God bless those children in the same way He has blessed me? Why wouldn't He make sure everyone had enough to eat or grew up in a safe and loving home? Why?
I've been thinking about this and I have come to the conclusion that I don't know. However, I can't help but think that God is making a point.
Hear me out.
You might be thinking "What kind of point could God possibly be making by allowing such a disparity to exist in the world."
The answer is: A very important one.
In fact, I'd argue that aside for salvation itself that understanding this point is the most important thing we could do.
So what is the point?
Here's what I think: From day 1 God has called us to be like Him.
So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:26-28
Then Christ came and told us to be like Him.
- Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
Luke 9:22-24
- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:26-27
So what does it mean to be like Christ? Well, after reading about Christ's life in the Gospels one thing is abundantly clear: Christ spent almost all of His time with the neglected, sick, downtrodden, poor and hated. His closest friend, Mary Magdalene, was most likely a prostitute. Jesus hung out with lepers. He lived a life of complete service to others and continued that even in death by dying the most horrendous death I can think of so we vile sinners could be reconciled with God once again. So to sum it up, Jesus was a servant to the rejected who spent His time healing others and reconciling us to God so that our souls would have peace.
And we are called to be like Christ... No pressure...
So do we take our calling seriously? Nope. Not even close.
Sure, we'll conduct canned food drives at Christmas and Thanksgiving and we'll write a $10.00 check to a medical research organization but is that really living like Christ? Is that really serving others? I think in our culture we view serving others as a derogatory idea. Most people aren't super pumped to work for someone else's benefit. We have the mindset that we should just take care of ourselves and not worry about everyone else. But that is not Christ-like.
Please do not feel like I am on some high horse, looking down at you, criticizing you. I'm throwing myself under the bus. I've been one to give twenty bucks to charity and then pat myself on the back for being such a good Samaritan. I have failed at being Christ-like.
So back to the original question: Why have I been so blessed and others have so little?
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.- Luke 12:48
I think we have been given our blessings to help us fulfill our calling of being Christ-like. We have been given resources that make it possible for us to serve others the way Christ would. The sad part is that we don't use them that way. Service is an active thing, not a passive idea. We don't like the idea of having to make ourselves humble and uncomfortable in order to serve someone else... But Christ did.
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.
John 13:13-15
Christ humbly served the broken, downtrodden, vile, sick and hungry. Yet we don't want to make ourselves uncomfortable...
Our calling to live like Christ may but may not mean that we move to a foreign country and feed the hungry. But lets get real... if you want to find the broken and downtrodden we just need to look out of our back doors. We can serve here. We don't but we can.
So here is what I think. We all need to make ourselves uncomfortable. We need to be Christ-like. We have been blessed in specific ways that others have not and God does not want us to hoard our blessings to ourselves. He gave us those blessings to help us carry out our calling and we have failed. So lets stop saying "Why me? Why did I get so blessed and you get so little?" and start saying "Here, let me help you carry that burden and make it lighter."
-Ada Grey
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