Luxury Living and the Very Poor
February 4th 2011 at 4:54pm
Here at HTG we’ve been reviewing our finances for the year ahead and I’ve been personally challenged by the topic of Christian giving and generosity (if you want to hear our sermons on the topic, you can listen, or read a transcript on our sermons pages). I don’t think it was intentional, but in the context the latest update from Clayton TV caught my eye. There was a short vid from The Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney on ‘Wealth and Poverty’.
We often forget how rich we are, but this reminded me that compared to many everyone in the West is very well off indeed. Which then raises the question of how generous I am in helping to meet the needs of people who are really poor. Apparently the average Australian spends almost 10 times as much on eating out as they give to help the very poor – in fact they spend more on sweets. At the same time some £1.2 billion people live on the equivalent of less than $1 a day – and some 68,000 people every day die of starvation.
I’m sure most people reading this will be giving generously, possibly much more than the average (and maybe Brits are more generous than Aussies, who knows). But it makes you think – what difference could we make to someone in real poverty just by giving up a few little luxuries?
Click on the image below to see for yourself:
If that doesn’t work use this link: http://church.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=d5c4aef36a582de40d5837112&id=ca5ee5f0ee&e=ff55ba7f53