Warm

I’m sitting in my snug heated office, sipping on hot cocoa while I type this. It’s not so cold for January, here in North Georgia, but it’s definitely cold enough to keep me inside where it is warm.

I think I should feel somewhat guilty that I am comfortable because I know there are people, many, many people, less fortunate than I, who are miserable right now. Many of these live in the northeast, holding on, as best they can, against the piercing cold that has gripped that region this winter. For this reason I am writing today because this is on my mind – the bitter, unrelenting cold and what it does to hope – because I know someone who is suffering for it and I am helpless to render not much more than superficial aid to her. She is far away in a small community in Upstate New York and she is freezing.

I also think about the other little families and single individuals who don’t have enough heat or garments to protect them from the winter weather. I think about the civic and volunteer organizations that do everything they can but whose funds are already spread too thinly among the growing numbers of the needy. And I think about the callous disregard for the basic requirements of life by a nation of people that is literally overwhelmed with abundance and obscene opulence.

It doesn’t seem right.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Marxist. I believe that anyone who is willing to work and earn a good living should also reap the rewards of their labor and enjoy it. I’m not wailing the injustices of the poor while shaking my fists at the rich. I believe that where there’s a will there is a way and that many unfortunate people could reverse their lot in life with just a small amount of effort. But there are plenty of homeless and downtrodden who simply have lost the will to lift themselves up. They don’t have the strength and they’ve lost heart.

In the thirties, a similar thing occurred, even after and notwithstanding all the government programs put into place to stimulate the economy after the Crash, people were so beat down by the daily struggle to survive that they couldn’t see anything to hope for. This is what happens when you go to bed cold and hungry. The energy to think ahead evaporates into wisps of vapor along with your body heat.

I heard our President tell us he is planning to throw a trillion dollars at outer space over the next decade. A trillion. There’s a number for you. Did you know that if you started as a baby, counting, you still could not count up to a trillion in your lifetime?

If I had a vote, I’d say, let’s feed and clothe and house the needy in this country first. Let’s make sure human life right now, right here, is worth living. I bet we’d still have a bunch left over to send spacecraft to dead planets in the quest to study where the human race came from.

Not everyone can be rich and Christ told us the poor we would have with us always. But what good is it to find out where we came from if we can’t see who we have become?