Monday, February 22, 2010

Are you hungry?

When we're hungry, we usually go to the fridge or out to a fast food joint or sit down restaurant and fill our stomachs in an hour or less. For millions of children around the world, there is no fridge, no McDonalds and no Applebees. For them, there's hunger, dirt and little hope.

We spent a few hours yesterday helping a wonderful organization called Feed My Starving Children by packaging meals for starving children around the world. A large group of us from Eagle Brook Church packaged enough meals to feed 136 children for an entire year.

What really blew me away was the math behind it. For $.17 you can feed six children a meal. That's less than the cost of a package of Ramen noodles.

Based on that, for $5, you can feed 176 kids one time. For $10 you can feed 352 kids... So, for about what it costs to grab a cup of fancy-pants coffee and a Mc-Value meal, you can feed one kid for an entire year.

Imagine what you could accomplish in that year, by just giving up $10.50 a week and donating it to Feed My Starving Children... For 52 straight weeks you'd make sure one little boy or girl could go an entire year without going to bed starving.

In America, we waste $10.50 like it's nothing. Spend too much on gas because it's inconvenient to drive a few miles to save five cents a gallon, go ahead and "super size" our meal because extra fries is never a bad thing. Blow $6 on a cup of coffee because "we deserve a treat." Impulse buy at the grocery store, Target, Walmart or any other large retailer simply because something looks good.

How about the stats that show the average American family throws out over $600 of food a year. How about shopping smarter and giving that $600 to Feed My Starving Children?

God calls us to feed His starving children, not fatten ourselves up for the evil one's feast. Unfortunately, Angie and I have wasted far too much doing the later and ignoring the former. But that ends today.

So, I challenge you this week to join us, deny yourself $10.50 worth of whatever it is you indulge in each week and give that to FMSC.org instead. Odds are, donating to FMSC will make you feel a lot more satisfied knowing you just bought lunch for 370 kids, than you would by giving it to Starbucks...

If the widow could give a mite, what can you give?

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