Expenditures reflect priorities. I did some research for a poem. I want to share what I found because some of it surprised me.
This is a busy time of the year for sports — World Series, the NBA, WNBA playoffs, the Stanley Cup college football, volleyball and other college sports; soccer, rugby, tennis and track world-wide; NASCAR, Indy cars, Grand Prix; golf, horse racing, fighting, even WWE.
Billions and billions of dollars are spent playing and watching sports. Four hundred billion dollars are spent gambling.
Billions and billions of dollars are spent on other forms of entertainment, over 50 billion on music alone.
Our personal appearance is costly — lipstick, mascara, perfume, jewelry — few billion dollars; hair care a few billion more; fingernails, toenails, a few billion more. Plastic surgery is a 16 billion dollar plus industry in America.
Food for thought. Yet in America an estimated 35 million people struggle with nutrition related problems. World-wide in a typical year an estimate 3 million children under age 5 die from malnutrition and nutrition related problems. That is over eight thousand children a day.
In America we waste 80 billion tons of food each year at an estimated cost of $160 billion.
These facts got my attention. I am not sure what to do about them but they do make me think about my personal priorities and the priorities of our nation.
There are far more references about caring for the poor in the Bible than how to vote.
Our church has a weekend food back-pack ministry for our adopted school. The school identifies students who they believe would otherwise go hungry on a weekend. We provide the food and the school distributes it. We also have a monthly food distribution which often goes to elderly people on fixed incomes. We also have a food pantry for emergencies.
If you have any suggestions you have for other ways to support the battle against hunger, please share them with me.
Nobel Peace Prize. After I started writing this particular blog the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the World Food Program. There are many articles highlighting the needs they face and the work they do. I highly recommend learning about both.
I believe we are to be good stewards over our resources and those to whom much is given much is expected. Care for the poor and needy is important to me.
Next week. Social justice is also important to me; however, I do not agree with many of the current paradigms being used to try to attack the problem. One big problem is people are afraid to criticize particular approaches to the problem of social justice. They fear any criticism of a particular approach will be consider racist. I would like to be able to examine particular approaches and still be seen as fighting for social justice.
To that end, I would like to hear your opinions of a statement that is controversial in America today:
All lives matter
I would like to hear your opinions of that statement before I write about it next week. Thanks in advance for taking the time to share your opinions.
Peace
Jerry
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