A Troubled World

We live in a troubled world. Violence is glorified so much that we take it for granted as an everyday occurrence. We are no longer horrified when we read about it in the newspapers and see it on TV and in the movies. We have become sensitized to it.

We live in a world where a child dies every five seconds of hunger. 250 children die every hour from drinking unsafe drinking water and 300 other people die of malaria. Thousands die each day from HIV Aids. Entire villages die of starvation.

We know there doesn't have to be world poverty. There is enough wealth in the world that if all the wealth were redistributed, all the people on the earth would be rich. There is plenty of food on the earth for all. Think of what we throw away each day in restaurants, our homes and school cafeterias. In the US, farmers are paid not to plant.

Education, the way out of poverty, shouldn't be just available only for the affluent. In Norway and Sweden a college education is free to all. There do not have to be people sleeping on the streets and in parks. Old people should not have to face weeks on end without seeing a single person. Children should not have to go to school without breakfast. A living wage for everyone does not have to be just the idealistic vision of a group of wild eyed liberals, The nation does not have to spend billions on war.

We are God's hands in the world. We have the power to change these things if we could only wake ourselves up from our terrible apathy. Changing this world begins with each one of us.