Disturbing Little Facts
Sunday is World Hunger Sunday and November is National Adoption Awareness Month. So despite my general distaste for “themed” months and days, my sermon Sunday is to reflect both.
I’m giving a bunch of numbers; they’re awful (please excuse that they aren’t all primary sources):
According to Bread for the World, and internationally respected Christian charity, five children become orphans from AIDS around the world every minute of every day. (link)
According to World Hunger, there are 850 million people around this world who are malnourished. (link)
UNICEF reported this year that “Hundreds of thousands of children are caught up in armed conflict as combatants, messengers, porters, cooks, and sex slaves for armed groups. In many cases they have been forcibly abducted…. Some 8.4 million children work in the worst forms of child labor, including prostitution and debt bondage, where children are exploited in slave-like conditions to pay off a debt…. [and] [n]early 2 million children are used in the commercial sex trade.” (link)
According to the USDA 13.5 million US households were what they call “food insecure” in 2004, that’s about a million more than the year before. That means that almost 12 out of every 100 households in the US doesn’t have enough food to feed their families. (link)
There are 100 thousand children in the US waiting for adoption. (link)
Jesus said: Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. (Luke 11:42 -NIV)
I think (I fear) we may be at risk of similar curses.
Grace and agitation,
`tim
2 Responses to “Disturbing Little Facts”
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November 19th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Just to let you know, I made use of some of these statistics you gleaned for my own World Hunger Sunday sermon. I traded lections off a bit, using the Gospel and 1 Kings passages from last week for this week, to remind my listeners that, when we feed others, God feeds us.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Hello Tim,
thank you for this blog, it’s great to be able to read other people’s ideas as we see things from another perspective that often helps us build our own way.
As you, all this hunger matter gives me the creeps. People in developed countries have no idea what people suffer from being malnourished.
And, even on TV when we watch those images of people suffering, we act like we’re actually watching a movie, it’s not real we smile, we say wow thank God I don’t live in such a country, or thank God I live where i live. This is indifference. Indifference along with general world hypocrisy are the death of thousands…
Many western organisations to whom we donate money have great intentions but often when they arrive “in loco” the money is not well managed, many times and most of times misused by local authorities. I know many cases of so. Like in one village in Africa to where, a Spanish humaniratian org sent 1000 bicycles, the first bicycle to arrive went directly to the association manager’s son, and all others end up in local supermarkets for sale. the same happens with food (that usually arrives out of date ), happens with school supplies also…
ok Sir, thank you and happy new year…