Dr. Seuss Causes Me to Ponder

This past weekend (March 2nd), was the birthday of Dr. Seuss.  At our house, we ate green eggs and ham for breakfast.  Then, we ended the day watching the latest Seuss release The Lorax.  Now, as a teacher, I have an appreciation for Dr. Seuss's ridiculous characters and uncanny way to make things rhyme.  However, as I watched The Lorax, it was his quotes that caused me to stop and ponder....


The first was...

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot.  Nothing is going to get better.  It's not."

Right away, I thought of Africa.  I am reading two books entitled It's Not Okay with Me and Is It Okay with You.  They are the story of one woman's journey to find meaning after living through 9/11.  She ends up finding her life calling in Africa. 
I started thinking about my life and how I even ended up traveling to Africa to pick up my boys.  I mean up until 6 weeks before the boys came home, we were using an escort to bring the boys home.  However, a part of me really desired to go and see where they lived, their country, and their people.  For 3 short months, all adoptive families were required to go to the DR Congo to pick up their children (guess what our adoption was finalized in those 3 months) and then travel by families was stopped due to violence.  As I look back, I think God wanted me to go and see.  I think He wanted to make me care "a whole awful lot".  As of yet, I don't know why...but I know that I will never forget the poverty, the beds without mattresses at the orphanages, the riot that gave me a first hand experience with true fear, the faces of the orphans, the makeshift whip, boiling water to make it clean enough to wash dishes in, dirt roads, water being sold in baggies, and the people everywhere!

Some very disturbing facts I have since learned about Africa...
~314 million Africans live on less than $1 a day
~30,000 children are dying every day in Africa from hunger and malnutrition...that is 2.9 million children a year

"Is it okay with you that one more child will die from hunger?  Is it okay with you that today thousands of nine year old girls will have sex for bread?
Since our cognitive brains can't begin to process this, we throw up a defense mechanism and say "I can't save twenty five million children and neither can you.  What do you want from me?" 
If you died and your child was hungry would it be okay with you that no one came to feed him/her?  Would it be okay with you that people would have sex with him/her so your child could have a piece of bread?"  (from It's Not Okay with Me)

This is not okay with me...I do care a whole awful lot!  It plaques my thoughts.  However, I feel so helpless.  I am unsure how to make a difference.  I am unsure what God wants from me.  What I do know is that it sickens me that children are dying from hunger while I throw food away.  It breaks my heart that babies are selling their bodies for a piece of bread that I will often throw out to my chickens.

So, my prayer is that I will see them, represent them, and love them as God does..

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity