A Reminder

More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished — 799 million of them live in the developing world.

More than 153 million of the world's malnourished people are children under the age of 5.

Six million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger.

Malnutrition can severely affect a child's intellectual development. Malnourished children often have stunted growth and score significantly lower on math and language achievement tests than do well-nourished children.

Lack of dietary diversity and essential minerals and vitamins also contributes to increased child and adult mortality. Vitamin A deficiency impairs the immune system, increasing the annual death toll from measles and other diseases by an estimated 1.3 million-2.5 million children.

While every country in the world has the potential of growing enough food to feed itself, 54 nations currently do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities to make up the gap. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the widespread hunger in a world of plenty results from grinding, deeply rooted poverty. In any given year, however, between 5 and 10 percent of the total can be traced to specific events: droughts or floods, armed conflict, political, social and economic disruptions.

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The photographer who took the above picture of a starving Sudanese girl struggling to make it to a food distribution center while a vulture waits for her to die won the Pulitzer Prize for this picture. He also committed suicide two months after he won the prize. I wonder if he took this picture without helping the little girl and felt guilty about not doing so - we don't know if he helped her or not, so it's just speculation.

I thought that a blog entry by someone I know summed up my thoughts exactly as I took a look at this picture for the first time:

I sometimes feel like that is what I do in my faith. I am the cameraman speaking to and documenting the injustice in this world and yet doing little to actually change anything myself. Hiding behind the camera, I so often sit and watch as the physically and spiritually weak and wounded struggle to find the feeding center and all I do is shake my head and cry while trying to remember the details of the story for a good sermon illustration later. If I speak with conviction, or simply loud enough, someone will hear the plea and act. I standby haplessly, hopelessly wanting someone, anyone to do something to change the circumstances. Crying out to God I ask, "Why, why can't things be different?" not recognizing that the answer lies with my own two hands. Oh, I preach about injustice, blog about the wrongs, and try to expose the truth that our world is desperately in need of something more, but too often allow that to be the end instead of the means by which the world is changed. Sadly, I don't think I'm alone.

It is so much easier to notice, and even hurt, for those who are physically and spiritually weak and injured. Our hearts and minds may be moved, but our hands and feet stay still. Why is it so easy to forget that "faith without works is dead?" Yes, love the Lord with all your heart, yes, love the Lord with all your mind, yes, love the Lord with all our soul, but the hardest yet may be loving the Lord with all your strength. Don't get me wrong. There needs to be people who speak, share, expose truth, and preach. Kevin did an amazing thing with this picture by sharing the plight of the Sudanese people with the world. There is not doubt in that. But if it that picture is the end of what happens then we have failed.