"Running on cushy shoes or feeding a child for a year......hmmmm"

I love our church, or perhaps I should say, as part of One Body; One Church; I love the group of people that assemble together on east 26th street each Sunday. In the 5or so years that we’ve attended, I’ve been challenged, inspired, convicted, nurtured and ministered to. I’m also deeply grateful for the children’s ministry which does the same. On the days that I manage to apply even a smidgen of that week’s teaching, I am a better mother and teacher. This morning was no exception. Today our leaders presented us with an opportunity to partner with the food bank of South Dakota and be a “Backpack Buddy.” For $135 you can buy a backpack that will be filled with food each week for an under-privildged child to take home on the weekends, giving them much needed nourshiment on the days in which little or no food may be available. And, because the food is tucked privately away in a regular ol’ backpack, no-one is the wiser that this child needs food. Each week in Sioux Falls alone, there are over 3000 backpacks filled and 1000 more are needed. (fyi, The Backpack Buddy program was started by a nurse in Arkansas….a humble little state full of lots of great leaders and great ideas….I’m just sayin’)


While presenting this opportunity for giving, our pastor made the point that our children inherit things they don’t derserve; they didn’t earn. No 1st grader deserves to be hungry. No 3rd grader should have to choose between eating himself or feeding his younger siblings. We talk a lot about starving nations and certainly people around the world need our help, but the truth is we have hungry people right in our own communities; in fact, in our own backyard.

When I was growing up in that humble state of Arkansas, I didn’t really know any poor people; well I knew poor people, but not 'going without food' poor (I also didn’t know any republicans until I got to college but that’s a story for another blog!) We didn’t have food kitchens or food banks or anything of that sort. Neighbors took care of each other; church families stood in the gap for their brothers and sisters. I wish someone smarter than I would tell me if the need for food assistance programs comes from a greater need and more poverty in the last 20 years or is it because we lost our sense of village and started looking out for ourselves instead of taking care of others?

Anyway, as our pastor spoke, my mind began to wander (much like it did just now as I remembered random childhood memories full of democrats and wealthy people) and I recalled an Oprah show that highlighted her work in Africa (please don’t mention this to my family because we “technically” boycotted her after she endorsed then Senator Obama over then Senator Clinton for President,) but anyway, she was speaking to critics as to why she chose to build a school in Africa instead of say, Chicago, and she made the point that poverty there is different than poverty here. We at least have a chance. She continued with, “Say what you will about the American educational system — it does work. ... If you are a child in the United States, you can get an education. ... I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. ... If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod, sneakers, or some money. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

I understand (well sorta) what she was saying and yet it’s a dangerous attitude that gives people the idea that’s o.k. to quit; that’s it’s o.k. to stop advocating for change in America; and that just because a child being educated in the inner-city of Chicago, who having sown from the seeds planted by their parents, wants an iPod instead of a uniform, that we should give up and move on to a more appreciative nation. I’m sorry, but should we really expect children who have nothing to be grateful for their nothingness?

This past week on facebook, several friends were posting a letter supposedly written to President Obama by a doctor whose patient was, (gasp) abusing “the system.” He went on about how health care reform isn’t needed, rather patient reform, and I apologize to him and my readers because while it was all over my news feed the past couple of days, I can’t find it right now so my version may be a little off, but you get idea; we shouldn’t really help the poor because they aren’t helping themselves; furthermore we shouldn’t help the poor because they are abusing the system. I get it. I know people who drive brand new cars; cars that I will never own or even think about owning and they’re on government assistance programs. I know people whose monthly income more than doubles our own and yet somehow have hospital bills waived and electricity bills erased. I understand the frustration, but God has called us to be the “hands and feet” of Christ not the judgement keepers. It doesn’t matter if you or I consider them “deserving,” it only matters that their children are inheriting poverty and ignorance that they didn’t earn. It only matters that their children are reaping a harvest they didn’t plant.

And of all people, we as Christians should understand this concept. Do some of these people probably not deserve the help? Sure, but then again, I didn’t do anything to deserve my family either. I didn’t deserve educated, Christian parents who sacrificed on all levels to see me succeed. I didn’t earn; I inherited. And it’s the same with our Heavenly Father. Do I deserve His grace; his forgivness; his mercy? Nope and yet he freely gives. Again and again and again.

When I started this blog, I committed to myself to tell the truth or at least my truth, so please hear me when I say I see the irony….judging others for judging others and yet that’s not my intention. My intention is to judge myself. I didn’t really want to write that check this morning, but I did. And yet what’s worse is that I spent almost the same amount, $125, just last night on a pair of running shoes. So, while I can totally justify my need for good running shoes and will continue to buy them until someone converts me to the new barefoot running method (not!), the truth is if I had waited a couple of months or even a couple of weeks, I could have been a backpack buddy for 2 children. Hmmm, running on cushy soles or feeding a child; a child, as I was reminded this morning, who has been stamped with the image of Christ.

"Change my heart, O God
Make it ever true.
Change my heart, O God
May I be like You."

(Eddie Espanosa, I think!)