March 13, 2018
I recently did a cleanse and it got me thinking. Perhaps the “easiest” part of this cleanse, is that I know it’ll be over, and I’ll have food again. For some people, they have no idea where their next meal is coming from, when it will be, what it will be, and more importantly – what they might have to do to get it. This caused me to think of so many other things we assume we have a privilege to receive in life. Every day, we take so many things for granted - our homes, our food, our family, our friends.
We so often don’t take time to think about those who suffer day in and day out. We don’t stop to think about the one thing that might have happened in that person’s life that put them on the wrong track. The one wrong turn that caused their life to look so much different than our own. Sitting through training for volunteering, I see the number of similarities between my background and women who find themselves in a vicious cycle of abuse. Do we stop to think about those in our society that suffer every single day with addiction, substance abuse, domestic abuse, rape, lack of food or shelter, the list goes on and on?
We’re all guilty of it, forgetting the pain of others. We might gripe about not getting that raise, or not being able to afford that new car, vacation or phone we wanted. But what if we all just took a moment from our busy lives and spend an hour a week volunteering? If you think you don’t have time, all you have to do is skip one TV show a week, or miss the evening news, or skip shopping on a Saturday. I know it may not seem like you have extra time, but we all do. We all spend countless hours each week wasting time on insignificant tasks.
And if you really don’t have the time, donate $20 a month, you know – probably less than you spend on coffee for the month – to a charity, any charity. The impact we make by giving our time, our love, a few dollars, or even our God-given gifts to others, far outweighs the imagined sacrifice. Love shared and exchanged amongst those in our community is a small price to pay for the grace which is returned to us.