As the sun is setting and the day is ending, a mother starts a fire and puts water in a pot to boil for dinner. For the next few hours, she stirs the pot and answers her children’s continuous question: “When we will eat, Mommy?” The mother responds back, “Look, I am making it now. You just have to wait a little longer.” The children grow tired, until they finally fall asleep without getting any food. Afterwards, the mother takes the pot off the fire and puts the fire out. The problem is not that the children fell asleep too early to get the food, but rather that there is no food to be found. People are starving in Mali.

This was on the International Mission Board prayer request list for today. But yesterday I came in from doing yard work an hour past lunch time and said, “I’m starving.”

The BTD is about eating the right foods so that I will be healthy and energetic. But I never want to be so self focused that I forget that there are millions of people who have no food at all.

I am NOT writing this because I want some government to step in and solve the problem. Perhaps my favorite quote about poverty is this: Socialism says, what’s yours is mine and I’ll take it. Christianity says, what’s mine is yours and I’ll give it.

I hope to be less self indulgent this year and more generous to IMB World Hunger, Compassion International, Neverthirst, and other volunteer organizations who are working to solve the root causes of starvation.