Last week was a really busy week, and I still haven’t recovered. So much for the weekend 🙁
When I got home from work last night, I had the chance to watch a Dateline episode on NBC. The story was entitled America Now: Friends and Neighbors, and focused on the toll our continuing recession is taking on poor, rural America. The show spotlighted Southeast Ohio, where visits to the local food pantry are up 30% in the last two years.
The only food one mother, who lived in her van with three kids, had been providing her small children was french fries. One man had worked 11 different jobs in the past five years, loosing one after another to financial collapses. As he tried to provide for his two teenage sons, he made the comment that if he was dead, at least they could collect his social security money.
It’s pretty safe to say that everyone reading this post right now is probably two or three paychecks away from disaster. If we, like countless others, lost our jobs or our health (or both), we would very quickly find ourselves in a very, very bad situation.
After watching that show, I feel so blessed with what I have. Even with the recession, most of us are still able to get by, generally doing ok. Not great, but getting by.
The thing is, there’s a massive number of people in the fight of their lives right now. We need to support them, both financially and prayerfully, as best we can. Find a way. Give a little or a lot. But give something, and try to make a difference. Do it quietly, behind the scenes. You will be blessed for your kindness.
One reply on “There by God’s Grace…”
I think you’ve brought up a really important issue here Paul. I feel like we’ve really been taken advantage of by those in power, and left to pick up the pieces while they walk away with billions.
As a society, we been trained to make bad decisions financially. We’ve been told that it’s normal to spend your life paying off debt with more and more debt…our lives become a blur of trying to work enough overtime to pay the bills, while at the same time trying to hold our relationships and families together as they are stretched dangerously thin. While the banks and the brokers get richer and richer off of our ignorance, families are living on french fries and the McDonald’s dollar menu.
Most people don’t believe that there is a way out…but there is. It all starts with financial education–unlearning the lies that we’ve been taught most of our lives.
Pick up a personal finance book from the library, or get one on tape. “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki is a good place to start, or “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey.
A little education can be the difference between being a slave to money, and being financially free to do the things we want with the people we love.