life looks different across the globe
i live a life that most people see as some huge stretch and sacrifice to how the rest of the world is living. and honestly, i've spent the better part of 5 years agreeing with them. tonight i'm struck by something else though. i just had a friend e-mail me to ask about my safety in Juarez and living this life as a missionary. she is a missionary in Cameroon Africa and we're from the same small church in Fairburn, GA. she said she understood if i was in a situation with the dangers in Juarez that i couldn't e-mail her back or talk openly about what was going on. i e-mailed her and said it wasn't like that at all. i explained that i live a fairly normal life in an apartment in TX, i just happen to spend a lot of my time in another country building homes. compared to what she was talking about, and even hers and her family's life in Africa, it made my life seem pretty cushy. all it takes is a 3 hr. flt and i'm back in the comforts of home in GA. somehow this just doesn't seem like that big of a deal in comparison.
i found out the other day that 50% of this world has never received or made a phone call. that seems unfathomable in our technology charged world. i've heard these crazy statistics my whole life about the rest of the world and how different our lives are. sometimes they make me think. sometimes they're just another statistic. but this one stuck with me. when i really thought about it, this "world" that we refer to all the time means something completely different for others than it does for us. somehow in this moment i can't get past how different my entire existence is from someone living in the exact same time as me; breathing the same air; seeing the same stars, yet nothing else seems the same. and this isn't just the case for a handful of poverty stricken people. this is the case for 50% of the people living on this Earth with us right now. in this moment that is overwhelming.
i was reading tonight about what has been and is continuing to happen in the Congo. the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army- a terrorist cult) kidnaps children to become soldiers or sold as slaves. they "massacre, kill, rape the women, kidnap the children, and burn and devastate the region." with the push of Islam, people found worshipping Jesus are tortured and killed, including whole congregations. roads are cut off by fighting, so even those trying to bring supplies to help are having to take the small planes into areas in which bullets are flying. what i was reading was published by Samitarian's Purse and it talked about praying for the children who have been captured by the LRA terrorists and to pray for the families who have been scattered and traumatized by the violence. immediately my thoughts changed to "family" and to my life and what family looks like for us living here. what seems to be the ultimate goal and what everyone tends to judge our quality of life by as Americans is if we're married, have a good job, and a family. i thought of how different my version of family is to these people that i'm reading about. i thought about so many whose families have been scattered, maybe never to hold one another again. their picture of "family" looks very different than ours. we don't live with these fears. family for us is forever and without fear of running from terrorists or being scattered far from one another.
this small American bubble that i live in continues to burst slowly as i allow more and more of the rest of the world to enter in. somehow as i sat here in my nice apartment tonight, paying bills and listening to Matt Kearney, my "huge sacrifice" of a world couldn't seem farther away from the one these people are living in this same moment.
i found out the other day that 50% of this world has never received or made a phone call. that seems unfathomable in our technology charged world. i've heard these crazy statistics my whole life about the rest of the world and how different our lives are. sometimes they make me think. sometimes they're just another statistic. but this one stuck with me. when i really thought about it, this "world" that we refer to all the time means something completely different for others than it does for us. somehow in this moment i can't get past how different my entire existence is from someone living in the exact same time as me; breathing the same air; seeing the same stars, yet nothing else seems the same. and this isn't just the case for a handful of poverty stricken people. this is the case for 50% of the people living on this Earth with us right now. in this moment that is overwhelming.
i was reading tonight about what has been and is continuing to happen in the Congo. the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army- a terrorist cult) kidnaps children to become soldiers or sold as slaves. they "massacre, kill, rape the women, kidnap the children, and burn and devastate the region." with the push of Islam, people found worshipping Jesus are tortured and killed, including whole congregations. roads are cut off by fighting, so even those trying to bring supplies to help are having to take the small planes into areas in which bullets are flying. what i was reading was published by Samitarian's Purse and it talked about praying for the children who have been captured by the LRA terrorists and to pray for the families who have been scattered and traumatized by the violence. immediately my thoughts changed to "family" and to my life and what family looks like for us living here. what seems to be the ultimate goal and what everyone tends to judge our quality of life by as Americans is if we're married, have a good job, and a family. i thought of how different my version of family is to these people that i'm reading about. i thought about so many whose families have been scattered, maybe never to hold one another again. their picture of "family" looks very different than ours. we don't live with these fears. family for us is forever and without fear of running from terrorists or being scattered far from one another.
this small American bubble that i live in continues to burst slowly as i allow more and more of the rest of the world to enter in. somehow as i sat here in my nice apartment tonight, paying bills and listening to Matt Kearney, my "huge sacrifice" of a world couldn't seem farther away from the one these people are living in this same moment.
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