Faith and I were able to volunteer at the World Hunger Farm's "Living on the Other Side" on Friday night. "Living on the Other Side" is similar to Mission Waco's "Poverty Simulation", with the main differences being that the Farm's version is less intense and is focused primarily on life in developing nations, rather than life on the streets of the U.S. Anyways, Faith and I had a great time, as we got to learn a lot more about the Farm and share a some of our experience in Haiti.

At one point, the facilitator guided the group through an exercise called "If the world were a village of 100 people". It was a simple sheet of paper with statistics set to scale for a community fo 100 that adequately represents the population of the world today. Some of it I already knew, but a lot of it was eye-opening for me, so I thought I'd glean from it and let the numbers speak for themselves. Here it goes:

If the world were a village of 100 people:

52 would be female, 48 would be male

57 would be Asians

21 would be Europeans

14 from North and South America

8 Africans

70 would be non-Christian, making for 30 Christians

70 non-white, while 30 people would be white

80 would live in substandard housing

70 would be unable to read

50 would suffer from malnutrition

1 would be near death

1 would be near birth

1 would have a college education

1 would own a computer

59% of this village's wealth would belong to only 6 people, and all 6 would be from the United States

If the world were a village of 100 people.

It's striking to me that at the same time I received this exercise, I had been reading through Acts 2 and 3, which speaks clearly of the early Christians sharing all their possessions so that nobody was in need.

Lord, may this "coincidence" convict me of my greed, materialism, and blatant lack of love for my neighbors across the street and across the world.