I forget just how embarrassingly rich we are until a reality check.

I recently read a story of a boy, about 5 years old and his baby sister, 2 years old. They lived in a village in Sub-Saharan African, and they lived with a single mother who was sick with HIV/AIDS. When she died, now orphaned, the boy took his sister from door to door to beg for food. A woman told them that they need to go to an orphanage nearby. When they went there, the pastor who ran the orphanage unfortunately had to turn them away because it was already full and running out of resources. As they turned away, a boy in the orphanage begged the pastor to receive them because he will share his food with them. But the boy and the girl were already gone and nowhere to be found. Stricken with guilt, the pastor also looked for them but they could not be found. Two weeks later, the pastor saw something lying in a ditch. It was the lifeless body of the two year old girl he turned away who died of malnutrition. The pastor never found her older brother.

I raised my head from reading this story to see my carpeted house. A refrigerator full of food. A big screen TV. Numerous electronic gadgets. A closet full of clothes. Embarrassing riches…

Life is not fair. We, who live in the U.S., are so unfairly rich. But why? Simply because we were born on this side of the continent! We have done nothing to deserve it. And I do fear the accountability that it presents. What will we do with it? It would be grave sin to use it all for our own enjoyment.

I had to walk out and repent. I took a stroll along the sidewalk among nicely manicured lawns of my neighbors. If there was any inkling of a thought as to why I’m so rich is somehow to due to what I’ve done, I deserve to die the most horrific death imaginable!

“Have mercy on me, O God, a sinner!” is what I prayed. And then God said, “I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” Jer. 31:34. My sin of complaining. My sin of resentment. My sin of envying. My sin of discontentment. My sin of greed… All washed away in the blood of Jesus Christ!

Everything we are given is a gift. This day is a gift. Our harsh boss is a gift. Even unemployment… Let us praise God and live the life of repentance – turning away from the self and turning toward God.

PH