While surfing the web today, I found a website called The Smile Train, promoting a charity that pays for cleft lip and palate operations. Its headline "The World's Leading Cleft Charity" caught my eye. It is a rare occasion that I see my name beside a birth defect that I was actually born with. The phrase struck me close to the heart, so I took the initiative to investigate. The charity is able to perform an operation for only 250 dollars per child. My similar operation was 20 years ago, and even then it was still very expensive here in the US. 250 dollars is pennies compared to the medical bills my parents have received throughout my lifetime.
And yet 100,000 little smiles are still in need of repair. Why?
Today on TV, I saw a new airliner in which passengers can eat five-course meals, sleep in nice beds, have the covers turned down for them, and be given new pajamas, tooth-brushes, and razors. Price? $5,000 to $7,000 for a seven hour flight. That isn't even enough time for the recommended length of sleep, not considering meals and all the other amenities included in the flight, and yet, many others around the world will not sleep tonight because they are cold or hungry. Their entire day could have been comfortable for 15 cents, and yet, another person is spending $7,000 to sleep in luxury on a plane for a few hours.
I read in a magazine about a mom (author of the article) who pointed out to her young sons that the monthly bill for their high-speed Internet would be the same price as supporting a little girl in another country for a month. The boys willingly said, "Mom, don't be silly. Who would pick the cable thing?" Children sometimes have such a better grasp of reality than we spoiled adults do.
So all day, my head has spun in questions. How can there be so many wealthy people and so many impoverished people in the same world? How can a father in my hometown choose to by cigarettes instead of better clothing for his daughter? How can I witness a mother taking a pet to the vet and neglect her child from seeing a pediatrician? How can I be thrilled with the invention of a hotel on a plane when I know how many people could have been fed for the same price? How could I sit here and write with a clean conscience knowing the money I just payed for a cell phone bill could have kept an infant in Uganda from being killed only because she was born with the same birth defect that I was born with... just in a different country? How can millions of dollars be spent on fertility drugs and procedures while orphans suffer and pine to be adopted?
No answers came.
The unanswered questions are beneficial, however, because they coerce me into being inquisitive, intuitive, inventive, insightful, and eventually involved. This world needs involvement. There is greed, laziness, and ignorance in those who least expect it... like myself. Humanity is aching. What are we doing to ease its pain? The smallest things count. And how convenient it is for us that our smallest things are what others consider wealth.
Oh, if I could hug the world tonight, I would. I resolve, instead, to mold my heart, mind, and actions with these thoughts.
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What a great post straight from the heart, Charity! (You have a way of doing that, you know.) And “Charity” is a lovely name, by the way…and a good reminder for us all to have a heart of sweet, gentle compassion, reaching out to those in need.
When you mentioned orphans needing adoption when people spend tons and tons of money on fertility treatments and stuff like that, it made me stop in my tracks while reading, for a moment. You see, my dad had cancer when he was 23 and almost died. But he lived miraculously, and was happily married to my mom a few years later. He couldn’t have children, however, due to the effects of the chemotherapy. So my parents decided to look into adoption. Long story short, I, the result of the unwed pregnancy of a 19-yr.-old girl from a home with alcoholic parents, was brought into a loving, Christian, healthy family when I was only three weeks old! I am eternally grateful to the Lord, because I’ve been adopted twice – once into my family here and once into God’s heavenly family…pretty exciting, huh? So I totally agree with you – there are those who need/want a family and plenty of those like myself who needed a home…so why not get them together? Oh, and some Pro-Life people talked to my mom as she was walking up to an abortion clinic while pregnant and needing help. As a result, she chose to give me the gift of life…then I received eternal life years later when I accepted Jesus as my Savior. So everything happens twice for me! :)
Sorry my post was long. But thought you’d enjoy a bit of my story.
Have a wonderfully amazing day!
~Your sister in Christ, Ashley~
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