Deep Thoughts

Last Friday, we did a spring cleaning at the office -- cleaning windows, lights, etc., as well as going through our storage room -- organizing, and getting rid of stuff we don't need anymore.

One of the things we've had there for years is a bunch of boxes of t-shirts that someone gave us to pass on to the less fortunate around the world.  We have over the years sent these sorts of things with missionaries and short term teams to distribute to people they're working with.  And the poorest of the poor out there are often happy to receive a new shirt, even if it has some odd thing printed on it. 

So why not these?  Well the shirts were advertising flea medication for dogs.  The sorts of people who are happy to wear strange shirts are usually also the same people who cannot afford medicine for themselves and/or their children, let alone an animal.  The shirt would be a constant reminder of how poor they are, and how rich we are.

It got me thinking about how privileged we are here in Canada. We buy the "export quality", or grade-A products from other countries, and leave the bruised, low-quality stuff for the locals.  We want to pay less, and get more. And we really don't want to know how businesses manage to deliver on that.  We complain about how bad our health care is, even though we have it far better than over 80% of the world. We expect nothing but the best, and call it charity when we give our junk away.

Yes, I'm generalizing here.  Some are certainly worse than others.  Some are incredibly generous.  Some are committed to buying fair-trade.  And finding good ways to use things we no longer need is a good thing.  But our western society seems to have pretty high expectations of what we "deserve", while hardly even thinking about how we impact the majority of the world who has so much less.  I know I'm more guilty of this than I would like to admit.

The divide is huge. The needs are many.  And not just financial. Poverty has many forms. Spiritual. Moral. Physical. Emotional. Relational. Visible and invisible. Our own western society is just as needy as any other. We have much to give. How much more do we have to learn?