Recently in Poverty Category

While we spill pixels about John Edwards, how many write about this?

Being a dad, I am strong in the animal sounds category. Pigs oink and cows mooo and rhinos snort and snuff (astute readers of Moo, Baa, La la la will get that reference) sheep baaa and goats maaaa.

Jesus warns that at the end of days the nations will be brought before him and he will separate out the sheep from the goats. The goats, to put it colloquially, are screwed. The sheep will be living large. And the difference? A consonant - a b or an m... a baaa or a maaa.

It is a haunting scene he lays out at the end of Matthew 25. There has been much theological debate about what it means and who the animals represent. Many argue that what Jesus is saying here doesn't apply to those who follow him - that this is a sort of second chance for those who hadn't made the decision to follow him. Others argue that this is a terrifying challenge for all believers - a challenge to never become comfortable in their faith.

I don't know what it means. I do know, however, that it has haunted me.

One sleepless night in Uganda I started thinking of this passage in a new way.

The thing that haunted me is the thing that haunts many who read the passages. Jesus is saying to one group that as they served the least of the world they were serving him. And he was saying to another group that as they failed to serve the least they failed to serve him. But what does serving him mean? Jesus says that as they visited the imprisoned and fed the hungry and clothed the naked they served him. But how much is enough? How much isn't enough? What is that line between really serving Jesus and really failing him?

In the midst of the suffering I was witnessing something came clear - my questions were all wrong. Jesus wasn't saying, "Well, you visited me 9 days a year in prison, welcome to paradise." He wasn't saying "Gosh, you only visited me 1 day in prison, see ya." He was simply saying, "Thank you for serving me as I was found in the least of the least."

Put more simply he is saying thank you for doing something.

And that is what it is about. We aren't called to try and solve all the world's problems. No one person is going to be able to care for the 2.5 million orphans living in Uganda... let alone the millions of orphans in other countries around the globe. We aren't going to eradicate the slums. We aren't going to be able to treat every single suffering person. But that isn't what we are called to do. Jesus just calls us to do something... do anything to help the hurting.

Paralysis in the face of the world's problems is the one thing we cannot afford to acquire. We have to engage. We have to do. We have to try. We have to make it part of our daily lives. We have to be his hands and feet on this earth.

This thought has liberated me; it has freed me up to do what I can while freeing me from the unrealistic expectation that I am going to be able to do everything... and it has given me the peace to believe that at the end of days I will be baaaaaaing and not maaaaaaaing.

On my first day at the unnamed hospital in Uganda, I met another little girl named Grace. I caught her out of the corner of my eye as I entered the children's ward and was talking to another little boy.

She had a tumor coming out of the side of her face that, from my distance of 20 feet or so, was big and multi-colored and unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was like something out of a science fiction movie. I don't like science fiction movies. It scared me. She scared me.

But as I approached her bed, I noticed something else about her - her huge brown eyes, her big smile.

I looked into her eyes and for a few moments the tumor disappeared. All I saw was the little girl. I wish I could say that was all I saw for the rest of the time I was there but it wasn't. I didn't know how to get over the tumor, get past the tumor. So I didn't. I just enlisted her help in a project.

Kim had sent along some packs of Emer-gen-C - vitamins that you mix with water to create a drink. I needed someone to help me mix up all the bottles. I took Grace.

We held hands as we distributed the bottles to the sick kids. I could not, however, bring myself to hug her or hold her. I wish I could have - I know I should have.

The next day when I returned she was gone and the last day I was there she was gone as well. I don't know what happened to her. No one does.

Mother Teresa said she saw Jesus "in the distressing disguise of the poor." I hope I didn't miss the chance to hug Jesus.

One of the great joys of the first four days of the trip was hanging out with the other bloggers who were there to visit Uganda. They were, to a person, extraordinary.

Here are two of them - Carlos and Heather Whittaker. This is a video Carlos did of part of our second day trip out into the countryside. Enjoy.

One word of caution - Carlos, who appeared on LA Ink, gives a couple extreme close-ups of his mouth in the first seconds during our bumpy bus ride. It works if you know and love him and it works if you just know him and are coming to love him.

Just in case you want to sponsor a child - click here.

I'm sitting in a London hotel room having had a nice Lodon sleep after a nice London dinner. I am out of my skin excited about going home and seeing my family - I literally can't wait.

But there is a huge part of me that wants to turn around and go back to Uganda.

This is not something I could have predicted. Then again the whole trip was thoroughly unpredictable. I didn't think I'd spend the whole time in and around Kampala, I had never heard of that hospital I discovered, and I never guessed I'd be playing balloons with kids and parents in a horrifying cancer ward.

But I want to go back. I mean I want to go home. I so want to go home. But I don't want to be back in Western culture. I don't want to be back in this place where there is so much of everything that we really can make God optional.

Within 200 steps of this quiet little hotel where I am staying there are at least four bakeries, six restaurants, two pharmacies, one real estate office, and on and on and on. Suddenly newspapers are everywhere with their sensational - and frankly mostly meaningless - headlines. Suddenly, with Internet access back to 'normal' I can tour the news much more quickly and read blogs much more easily. But there is so little I can bear to read. I'm supposed to be finishing up an oped on evangelicals in politics for the Washington Post and I am struggling to write anything. I know this is just called culture shock. I know it will fade.

But I don't want it to fade.

When I left Uganda yesterday, a thought hit me. For the days that I was there I was living a life that was really, truly worth living. Or perhaps I should say I was living a life that I think honored God. Serving others and helping others is that kind of life.

I know, I know that that doesn't have to end in Uganda. I don't have to head back home and lose all of that spirit. I know that a life that honors God doesn't just happen in Kampala's slums.

But I don't want to be back in this world of temptations... temptations to be majorly focused on minor things, temptations to fill my time and my life and my mind with idle things, temptations to lose the reality of God in the middle of our tidal wave of plenty.

I haven't watched LOST for a few weeks now - and am not particularly interested in seeing it again (though I know that will change very quickly). The last episode I saw was the first one; the one that showed Hurley back in a mental institution.

I wonder if the whole point of the show is far less than we imagine it to be. I wonder if the greatest point of the show is simply this - when stripped of their goods and their comforts, this group of people come alive. When they have nothing they find everything. I wonder if the whole point of the show is simply that - they think they are lost but more than anything they are finding themselves. All of the other stuff - the crazy visions and weird people and bizarre happenings just provide for interesting context.

And I think - and I know I am probably completely off on all of this stuff - that perhaps the reason some want to go back is because they want to live again. Either that or it is really Atlantis or the eternal home of the Easter bunny.

While there I finished the book on Bono. In the mid-80s we went to Ethiopia with his wife Ali to work in the camps where the starving and dying came to find food. Of their return to Europe from the time in the camps he said:

“I remember Ali and myself flying back from Africa the first time. And the first few days in Europe again, it was culture shock. We had a lot more difficulty reentering than we had landing in Africa, and figuring that out. We said to each other, ‘We’ll never forget what we’ve been through.’ But we did. We got on with our lives. When we said grace at the dinner tables, we said it a little stronger. We meant it. Food tasted a little more. But you just get on with your life, and you slowly find a place to put Africa, this beautiful, shining continent with all its ups and downs. Occasionally, you’d take it out, you’d look at it again, and then you’d put it back in that safer place called distance and time."

Of course Bono has taken Africa down off of that shelf and he is living for Africa more than ever before.

I just hope and pray that I won't forget... that might be a lot easier to do in Uganda.

I'm going to be uploading some rough video shots to give a sense of the places... this short one ends with that little girl sitting alone on the blanket... Online Videos by Veoh.com...

Before I head back to the hospital this afternoon and before I begin the journey home tomorrow, some thoughts on what can be done here... initial thoughts I suppose: - Sponsor a child through Compassion International. The longer I am...

I saw this poster on the wall of the cancer clinic today: Yes, this cancer clinic: And yes, this IS the same Benny Hinn who sent out a request for his followers to pay for his new Gulfstream jet. Benny...

This is one of the images I can't get out of my head: It was being pulled through the filthy streets of a slum by a bald headed girl in a pale yellow dress wearing worn red flip flops. [I...

Today's journey took us outside Kampala's squalor and desolation and into creation. Uganda is a land of rolling hills carpeted by rich soil that births vibrant green life. I just didn't know that yesterday. Today though, in Kisoga, I...

I couldn't escape the horror - that was the horror. That was my 2am realization. As I stood inside that 6' x 6' hell hole and as I walked through the slum the horror was that I couldn't get...

Tonight I am numb. I came to Uganda prepared to see suffering, to celebrate hope, and to provide - in the smallest ways through this blog - an insight for others into that mysterious thing called poverty. What I wanted...

I am watching John Edwards suspend his campaign and I am sad. I'm sad that his relentless voice for the poor and against the two Americas in which we live is leaving this race. I'm sad because we live in...

John DiIulio, noted sociologist (and criminologist and political scientist and head of Bush's Faith-Based office)(and dear friend) has written a piece in First Things about which candidates are the best on poverty issues. His answer? "Honest Mike and Sister Hillary"...

I was talking to my friend Pia last week about poverty. She is an extraordinary woman committed to serving God with mind, heart, and hands. As we talked, she raised a question about the nature of poverty - about what...

Several months ago I posted a story about a man in Hawaii who was giving away houses and suggested he be nominated for an award for his kindness. I haven't paid nearly enough attention to finding such stories. I came...

In today's Philly Inquirer, noted UPenn professor, sociologist, author, and former Bush faith-based head, John DiIulio writes a tenderly devastating piece about Bush's "compassion contradiction" that still offers Bush a chance to do the right thing. DiIulio notes that it...