40 Days 40 Gifts Day 12

* A quick disclaimer: I know I'm runnning behind and that today is actually Day 19 but I need a little time to reflect on what I'm learning each day. I will try and catch up soon though.

Today I finally got around to doing that CV that I was supposed to do on Day 7. The CV was for the gardener that my parents employ. He is a hard working, dedicated guy who takes initiative and is willing to learn. And yet each day he goes back to his shack in the Primrose informal settlement. He is entrepreneurial, trying to eek small amounts of money out of doing odd jobs here and there, most of which he sends back to his wife and children who live in Polokwane. It’s a typical South Africa story. And it makes my heart ache. Why is it that so many people in South Africa who are dedicated, willing to work and who are committed to their families are unable to find sustainable employment? It just highlighted for me (for the umpteenth time in this journey so far) how much I have to be grateful for. In my immediate family, all of us are employed, between four of us we live in three houses, we have four cars between us and we certainly don’t go without. And yet in this guy’s family, he is the sole breadwinner – he has a shack in an informal settlement, and perhaps a hut in Polokwane, he has no car and yet he is doing everything he can to make sure his children have a better life than he has.

We live in such a crazy, unbalanced, unequal world and one of the ideas behind the discipline of simplicity is to try and contribute towards equalling that out. You see, God does provide – enough for every person in the world. Hunger and poverty arise out of the unequal relations that we as human beings have constructed over time. We know that there is enough food because food that is not consumed by the wealthy gets dumped all the time when it expires. And yet millions live in hunger. We know there is enough to go around because the major diseases of the wealthy are diseases associated with OVERconsumption – heart disease and other chronic illnesses are diseases that are to a large extent associated with over consumption. And yet millions of people die daily from preventable diseases of poverty and underconsumption – cholera, malaria, kwashiorkor and of course starvation.

So God provides enough for us. The problem lies in how we as a human race, and the systems we have created distribute what God has given us. Essentially the problem isn’t one of too much poverty, it’s one of too much wealth. Focusing on simplicity helps us to take cogniscance of what we really need and what is just fluff that we like to hold on to. The uncomfortable question of course is, are some of the things we hold onto denying someone else the basics for life? Is our consumerism undermining the ability of someone else to survive?

LESSON 12: The world’s problem is not too much poverty, it’s too much wealth.

God’s Kingdom is one of abundance. As followers of Christ we must ask the uncomfortable questions about our own attachment to things and what that means for our prayer of “Thy Kingdom come.” Does my attachment to things actively assist a world in which God’s Kingdom reigns or does it undermine that? The early church understood this. In Acts 2: 42-47 we have a wonderful picture of believers praying together, learning and joining in fellowship and in this community they “sold their possessions and goods, they gave to everyone as they had need.” How wonderful would our world be if we all had a little less so that others could have a little more?