Not Enough

Last weekend my wife and I had the great opportunity to go to a Family Life Ministry Weekend to Remember marriage getaway. We had an awesome time of fun and focus on our marriage relationship! It was also a much needed break from our busy 3-child family and work life. We stayed 2 nights in the same hotel the conference was held.

While relaxing one of the evenings in the hotel room, we were enjoying the complimentary cable TV. This in itself is a treat for us since we don’t have cable at home.  After flipping channels, we settled on HGTV to watch a show called House Hunters. Now, there are a few TV shows we keep up with (usually by watching them on hulu.com) but none of them are reality TV shows. And since we watch hulu.com we don’t see a lot of commercials.  So after a few minutes of watching this reality show about purchasing up-scale homes and watching commercials selling me things like teeth whitener, a tiny feeling began to well up within me.  I’m not sure how to describe it but it was an uncomfortable feeling.

Well, I figured this was a good sign – a sign that God has been changing my heart. That I have been somewhat REsensitised to the self-indulgence we see in our culture.  Granted, this was only a hint of a feeling and I continued eating my junk food and watch the show until it was over – causing me to stay up way too late. 🙂

Knowing what I know now about the world, poverty, child mortality rates, living conditions, etc., it was amazing to me to see a couple on this show in agony over which $900,000 home to purchase.  But you know, that mentality is not that much different than the mentality which causes my family to agonize over which restaurant to eat out at.

I wish I had time to pull off a video idea I had.  What I really WANTED to do was create a video using images of poverty but with the audio from House Hunters.  I thought it would make for an interesting artistic statement.  Since I don’t have the luxury of time to put that together, I thought the next best thing would be to share two videos.  Here’s the first one.

Again, I don’t mean to put down anyone on this video – or anyone on the show.  I’m sure many or most of us are guilty of pursuing the higher life.  Like my pastor said once, when we compare ourselves with someone with LESS than us we feel blessed.  When we compare ourselves with someone who has MORE than us, we are left wanting more.

When you look to the right and see a gaping resource gap in humanity and you look to the left and see a towering mountain of excess resources, you can’t help but feel the tension – internally and externally.  What is it in us that prevents us from giving our extra to those who have nothing?  I’m working on a song on a similar theme.  One line in it goes like this: “Not Enough”…Said from the lips of greed AND the lips of need…

We have enough.  We have the food.  We have the money.  We have the ingenuity.  We have the means to ship around the world (just look at amazon.com).  Yet, somehow, part of us are still dying while part of us  continue to live.