- Everything at the Bose store
- The latest version of my Trio phone (I don’t have the Windows version for heaven’s sake!)
- Several pounds of books
- Dozens of DVD’s
Then I listed everything I really, really needed.
Yep. I didn’t need a single thing for Christmas. I give bags of clothing I no longer wear to charities every year. We have more stuff in our house than we can figure out how to store. My phone does, unfortunately, still receive calls. I have more books than I can read and more DVD’s than I have time to watch. I still want the stuff from the Bose store but Jesus never said this journey would be easy.
So my request to my Sons and the stunning Mrs.Burchett was a bit different. Pool the money you would have spent on me and go to the website of World Vision. Then click on the Gift Catalog and give a gift to people who really, really do need things. There you can find a need for whatever stirs your heart, from animals to education to fresh water provision. Nothing would make me happier. Here is just a sampling from the catalog.
- For just $75 you can buy a goat for a family and provide year round milk and cheese
- How about building a fish pond stocked with tilapia to provide food and income opportunities for a village? The cost is $200.
- Like more exotic animals? Your Christmas money can provide an alpaca ($360) or a camel ($685) to a struggling family.
- For $50 you can contribute safe water to an African school or for $100 you can help dig a deep well
- Want to help out children in the United States? A gift of $25 will fill a backpack and $500 provides essentials to a needy child.
- You can contribute to rescue young girls from the sex trade industry or a little over $100 will give pre-natal care for women who have no hope of that basic need.
- Help build a health clinic or pay for eye surgery for a child that has no hope to learn without the procedure.
- Give the gift of musical education, sports, and other educational needs
- How about offering new hope to children with disabilities by giving a wheelchair or prosthetic limbs to war victims?
- Feed and care for widows and children affected by the HIV/AIDS plague in Africa.
Can you read that list and not feel just a little sheepish (not the type available for $105) about our lack of sacrificial giving as Christians in this country? Here is some research from a very annoying and convicting organization called empty tomb, inc. They are also a very important ministry that God has raised up to be a Nathan to our comfortable and consumer Christianity. Here is how America spends some of it’s resources.
