(note: Originally written my sophmore year of college in January 2003)
Continued from part V (part IV, part III, part II and part I)

Millions die everyday the statistics are appalling. What are you going to do about it? You can sponsor a child or give something at thanksgiving. You can give out of your abundance and still live with everyone of your physical needs and many of your other needs and wants met. Give till it hurts. Give till you can sympathize to even a slight degree with those whose lives are shaped, marked, centralized around their suffering. If any can understand Christ I think they can to a great degree then we know.
The truth is that for many of us we will never really know what that sort of suffering and feeling of hopelessness is to its fullest. If I want flat broke and lost everything, couldn’t find a job and had no place to live, my parents would take me in feed me, clothe me and give me shelter for as long as I needed. If I decided to have no medical insurance and live overseas somewhere, if any emergency occurred my family and my church would pool their resources and get me the medical care and the ticket out of wherever I was in a second. If I go to a country where many are persecuted and killed for their faith, I might have the potential to be martyred. But there is also the strong possibility that because I am American, and those have in a sense the entire US army behind me, many will think twice before senselessly killing me. Do you see how far removed we are from the suffering so many others endure? We will never, know what it is like to wake up in the morning on a dirt floor, not knowing what they day may bring, where are next meal will come from if it comes at all, if today death will knock on our door, or likely somebody else close to us, to curl up in agony because the pain is unbearable and has been for longer then you can remember to count.
So give!!! You can roller blade in heaven! You don’t need your own pair to take out once during the summer. Spend the time you would be playing video games to petition your church leaders to do something about the aids epidemic, and take the money you get from selling your video game system to pay for vaccinations and help educate a village on the problem of AIDS. If you go out to eat once a week make it once a month and spend the time you might have gone out eating frozen pizza and taking that money and send it to Bread for the World. Instead of buying that new pair of pants or shirt you want (not because you necessarily need one, but because your other clothes just aren’t “cool”) take that same amount and send it to an organization in Russia that gives coats to freezing families with no home.