This morning, I probably used about 100 of litres of water in my 5 minute shower; by the time the day is over millions in developing countries will have used only 10 in their entire day. Before I go to bed tonight, I’ll probably have a snack; around the world, millions of children go to bed hungry every night. I believe that it doesn’t have to be this way.
I’m one of those people who “needs” to eat just about every few hours. People give me a hard time about not looking like I eat much sometimes and then I tell them about the time I nearly fainted in a Ukrainian classroom during a two week missions trip on a day where my body just decided it had been too many hours since I’d eaten. Food is important to me, it’s important to all of us. It’s something around which we build community and something which divides us. We don’t usually go very many hours without it. Next weekend, I’ll be joining with 100,000 other youth and young adults in Canada and about 1.5 million around the world to do World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine. I’ll be fasting for 30 hours to remind myself of some of the short term effects of hunger and to take action against poverty (and I’ll try really hard to drink enough juice so that I don’t faint!).
We’ll all be raising money, but I believe that it goes so much deeper than that; we’ll be changing our perspectives, we’ll be changing our hearts and we’ll be changing our world.
Have you ever done the Famine or a program similar to it? What was your experience? Is an activity like this a meaningful way to engage youth? Are we using these experiences to make lifestyle changes and become people who are genuinely concerned about what’s happening in our world?
Until next time.
