I’ve been reading Max Lucado’s MAX ON LIFE in which he has compiled the questions that he has received throughout his ministry combined with his answers.
In one chapter (Chapter 28) he discusses how we have ample resources to reach out to the world.
Ours is the wealthiest generation of Christians ever. We are bright, educated, and experienced. We can travel around the world in twenty-four hours or send a message in a millisecond. We have the most sophisticated research and medicines at the tips of our fingers. We have ample resources. A mere 2 percent of the world’s grain harvest would be enough, if shared, to erase the problems of hunger and malnutrition around the world. There is enough food on the planet to offer every person twenty-five hundred calories of sustenance a day. We have enough food to feed the hungry.
And we have enough bedrooms to house the orphans. Here’s the math. There are 145 million orphans worldwide. Nearly 236 million people in the United States call themselves Christians. From a purely statistical standpoint, American Christians by themselves have the wherewithal to house every orphan in the world.
I don’t mean to oversimplify these terribly complicated questions. We can’t just snap our fingers and expect the grain to flow across borders or governments to permit foreign adoptions. Policies stalemate the best of efforts. International relations are strained. Corrupt officials snag the systems. I get that.
But this much is clear: the storehouse is stocked. The problem is not in the supply; the problem is in the distribution. God has given this generation, our generation, everything we need to alter the course of human suffering. – p. 34 Max on Life by Max Lucado
(Information cited is from UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 2009 www.unicef.org/sowc09/report/report.php)
Lucado goes on to write that change needs to begin with the Christians… just as it started two thousand years ago with the transformation of the apostles, who gave up everything to take the gospel everywhere. Thanks for the challenge, Max!