Wretch

'Their deaths don't make headlines. Only their parents remember their names.' This was the ending sentance from an article about the 'Hungry season' in Niger. Every year there is a stretch of time between when crops are planted and when they are harvested that food supplies are generally stretched past their limits. However, since there was a severe drought for the past year, the hungry season has basically been going on since last year's planting. Various aid groups and such are attempting to make it into the small towns across the country to find the worst cases (mainly children) in order to get them immediate attention or take them to the closes hospitals. Unfortunately it's becoming almost impossible to do this becuase everyone in the villages turns out becuase they know there will be free food and medicine there, so there are so many people that it's not worth trying to screen the extremely malnourished from the boarderline healthy. If they did, there would be riots. And so thousands of children have died because of a food shortage and thousands more will continue to die. I thought this last sentance was very appropriate becuase it was simple, pessimistic and extremely depressing. That's exactly what this situation is. Simple. People dont have enough food to keep their bodies functioning. Pessimistic. Noone cares, not even enough for there to be any real world attention to it. Depressing. These little lives are being snuffed out and the only ones who will care are the parents of dead child.

'Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.' A wretch. Yes, that is me. Today I am a wretch not because I dont love God or because I take God for granted or because I lack the discipline or devotion that should be the response of a real sinner saved by grace. Becuase of the presence of those realities in my life daily, I will call myself simply a sinner today. But today I will call myself a WRETCH because I will go home from work today and sit down and stare at my refrigerator and try to decide what I feel like eating. Or, better yet, I will go out with a couple of friends and order something on the menu that sounds good. Niger will be a million miles away in my mind and I wont care (not enough for there to be real change in my actions or activities). It is only a truely sick, wretched person who, when enlightened and confronted with such indisputably wrong and unfair realities, turns away and continues the imbalance of such a scale.