After a hearty helping of pancakes last night, Ash Wednesday has rolled around again. Last year Matt took a picture a day for 40 days. I thought it was a great project but this year we will embark on a Lenten discipline together.
Here are some facts (care of Bread for the World) that have inspired our 40 day journey:
-1.02 billion people across the world are hungry.
-Every day almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes (that is one child every 5 seconds if you do the math)
-947 million people in the developing world are undernourished consuming less than the minimum amount of calories essential for sound health and growth
For the next 40 days we plan to eat at least one meal a day of rice and beans only.
Along with our beans and rice we plan to read a book centered on theological and practical issues of poverty and injustice. Book #1 (at least for me but hopefully Matt will be willing to re-read and share in discussion with me) will be Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. I am also hoping to at least begin David Shiplar's The Working Poor.
Although we will never understand what it is like to live in such extreme poverty, this is our attempt to remember that we live in a world where people go hungry each and every day. It is our attempt to remember that in our unjust world we have been given much.
No comments:
Post a Comment