Facing Our Fate

As I ran through my few minutes of internet, trying to catch up on world news I just felt ill today. It seems as though all the glaring injustices I see in the world today have come home to hit hard and hurt God’s children.

First and most prominent to my life now, has been climate change. We are still dragging through the dry season here and it’s rough. By midday the temperature bounces around 105F and it’s super dry. Dust and dirt rolls across the courtyard of school penetrating everybody’s eyes and throat. This coupled with severe scarcity of water makes life tough. It’s so hot that everyone should be drinking water all the time but it’s tough when there is hardly enough water to go around.

I’ve been reading that the flooding in Pakistan is almost unimaginable and that over 1 million people are lacking basic necessities like food and clean water, let alone any chance at stability and getting a livelihood back. The UN is reporting donor fatigue and a major lack of resources needed to help people. I don’t blame donor either, many have just contributed to other disasters related to climate change. This on top of mudslides in China, the wildfires in Russia, the scorching heat in the US has made life very hard for many people including me. On the other side of things, Chile is desperately trying to save miners who spend a majority of their time underground in harsh conditions trying to bring up expensive dirty fuel that contributes to more greenhouse gasses. It strikes a chord with me that so many people and so much of our precious environment is sacrificed to continue the worlds dirty fuel habits. I don’t know what it will take to learn

Second is changing the way we eat in America. I saw that 300 million eggs were recalled. I’m not surprised as this has increasingly been a problem for America. Factory farming leads to more diseases and horrible environmental degradation. The way American’s eat meat is not sustainable. I’m going to put it out there and say that I now fully believe that it is morally wrong to support the industrial meat industry of America. Not to mention to the fact that other countries are following in America’s footsteps (Botswana). If you aren’t sure how I’m connecting the dots here or why I feel so strongly, please email me.

Lastly and also most crushing to my heart is the Democratic Republic of Congo. The other day a rebel group attacked a fairly large village and in the process of destroying most it, rebels ended up repeatedly raping over 200 women. These rebels do this not just for pleasure but as a weapon of intimidation. They forced other family members to watch as they repeatedly raped wives, women, widows and children. Just pause for a minute and try to fathom a large group of men running into your home or town or area in which you live and either repeatedly raping you or forcing you to watch as this was done to your loved ones. This has gone on way to long and must be stopped. The situation is really complicated but it doesn’t change the fact that as a world body we can’t collectively do something to stop it. The conflict minerals bill was a start but it’s going to take much more to heal the deep lasting wounds of the Congo.

I realize that I have quite a contrast here going from Tofo, a near heaven on earth to the despair of today but that the reality we live in. Heaven and hell are both present on this earth here and now and I feel called to push out hell and bring heaven to the darkest corners of the earth.