More Blessed Than We Know

I recently moved to a little place in the foothills of Virginia, just outside of Martinsville. There is a little trickle of a natural spring here, and you can see folks over there from time to time filling up their bottles. Most of them drive, even though they live within a kilometer or so of the "watering hole." With the recent economic downturns in our economy, this Thanksgiving, I did some evaluating of just where I stand. That little spring got me thinking. I walk a few feet to turn on the spigot to get clean water, or drive a few yards to collect natural spring water. Yet almost 15% of the world's population has to walk to collect water that may or may not be clean. Even more have no access to proper sanitation. In just the ten minutes it will take for me to write this blog, 120 children will die because of lack of water, and another 35 will have died from sanitation related diseases, and that doesn't even begin to account for the adults who die for the same reasons. I just replaced a chandelier in the dining room of the parsonage because of a short in two of the sockets which held the five bulbs in that chandelier which was there before we moved in. I walk to any corner of my house and flip a switch and I have light from electricity. But over a quarter of the world's population doesn't have access to electricity. When I hear a statement such as that, I envision a desolate area of Africa or Asia and jungle huts with torches for light. But in two of my recent trips to Romania, a modern nation, which looks more like America each time I visit because of satellite TV and cell phones, I found that some of those who have no access to electricity live beside those who do. On my first trip we visited a woman who graciously entertained us in the one room which contained her bed, sitting area, pot-bellied stove cooking and heating unit, and for light--a small bulb suspended by a pair of wires that traced back to a car battery. Just outside of her home ran electrical supply lines, but a "tap" would cost her $1200, over three years income for her. Amazingly over 1/6 of the world earn less than $1 per day, and 1/5 earn less than $2. Then a year later I preached in a village one evening and realized it was time to stop when the sun went down, and the room went dark. And this was in a technically advanced country. I guess all this is to say that I believe that we as Americans, who represent less than 5% of the world's population and consume over 43% of the world's resources, thank God for the wrong blessings. For it is not in what we have (the things, the ease of life, the wealth that we worry about losing in economic downturns, etc.) that we find God's true gifts. It's not even the traditional values that we name--family, friends, freedom--all of which we, as Job, could lose in an instant. It is for the life-changing gifts of God from which we can never be separated that we should give thanks--love, grace, mercy, salvation--all of which we as Christians should be sharing with others. Praise God from whom all blessing flow.