Perspective

My sons and I are planning on taking part in a short term mission trip this summer to Guatemala City, Guatemala.  This is a new experience for me; Canada is the only country I have been to outside of the United States.  It is a new experience for my boys as well, and I think for a majority of the group that we are travelling with.  As part of our preparation for the experience, we are reading a book entitled “Serving with Eyes Wide Open” by David Livermore. 

The first chapter of this book, which we were scheduled to read this past week, focused on six snapshots that required me to put my daily assumptions about life into perspective.  The snapshots focused on population growth, poverty vs. wealth, disease, refugees, McWorld, and fundamentalism versus pluralism.  They were designed to get the reader to realize that our way of viewing things that happen as Americans is not the way most of the world views them; our perspective is different. 

Our current world population is 7.3 billion people, with the United States making up 325 million of that, or about 5%.  Both China and India are four times our size.  The highest growth rates are in countries such as Nigeria and in the African continent as a whole.  40 percent of the world population is under 15, while only 20 percent of America is under 15.  Developing, or majority, countries are the countries with the highest percentages of children and population growth, and often have the highest levels of poverty, higher mortality rates, worse health care systems, and limited education options.  Our demographics are not the world’s demographics.   Perspective.

Poverty was the second snapshot listed.  20 percent of the world’s population live on less than $1/day.  Another 20 percent live on less than $2/day.  The wealthiest 447 individuals in the world had the same net worth as half of the world’s population (over 3.5 billion people) combined.  Talk about an uneven distribution of wealth.  I worry about weather I can afford to do a class reunion trip this summer.  Half of the world’s population fights to try to earn enough on a daily basis to eat, and are not always successful.  The author mentions a person forced into bonded servitude to pay off a $35 debt.  Perspective.

1 billion people lack safe drinking water.  40 percent of the world’s population lacks basic sanitation facilities.  Approximately 25 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, primarily in Africa.  These are mind numbing numbers to me, and difficult to come to grips with.  The numbers in regards to refugees was just as staggering; according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 51 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations in 2013.   Half of those people meeting the definition of refugee (16.7 million individuals are in this subset) are under the age of 18.  Approximately 70% of this same refugee subset are also identified as Muslim.  Almost 4 million refugees are Syrian, the majority of which have arisen since the Syrian Civil War within the context of the Arab Spring protests and have escalated dramatically with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  Perspective.

We have difficulties in our family, and our community and region have issues that we must face as well.  Part of my preparation for our Mission trip is requiring me to ensure, though, that I keep these in perspective with what the rest of the world faces.  Our family issues, and our community issues, are still significant; they need to be kept in perspective, though.  We have much to celebrate even when we face difficulties.  I am forced to recognize the extent of my blessings in comparison with what the rest of the world encounters.  I also am forced to evaluate how well I use my privileged position; how well do I take advantage of the opportunities I have to impact my community and the world in which we live?  I think there is a challenge here for all of us to evaluate how well we do in this endeavor.