Thursday, July 28, 2005 | by nathan

Uh Oh.

I’m having a big problem.

I can’t stop watching the videos of the famine in Niger. And not in that way that I can’t stop looking at the really nasty pictures on Snopes, or the way that I get kind of fascinated by pictures of tumors.

I can’t stop watching them because I believe that something - some miracle, I pray - will happen there. Mostly, I can’t stop watching it because God won’t let my heart go with this idea that if you want to know the heart of Christ, you have to understand the poor. Now here I am, watching, wanting to know.

This is a problem for someone like me, as I am terrified of bugs and poor people and sadness and - if we are being honest here, which we might as well be - hard work. And all of these things are involved in just watching the videos in Niger, much less going, which is what I am wonder if I am supposed to do, for a little while.

Also, it is a problem because I have this nice life. I am madly in love with
Brian, and with my life - mostly - and I am snug and comfortable. Maybe this is the part of me that feels like I need to destroy anything good I receive, but I feel like my comfort needs to be blown apart.

Last night, as a joke, I remarked, “Revival is what Christians call it when everything starts going wrong.” It hit me, after a moment, that I had said something very true, as I actually believe that we see God the most when things around us start turning to shit.

Then, this morning, watching the videos on CNN, I realized that things already have turned to shit - that they have been shit for quite some time - for the poor on this planet. How can I see this and not do something? It’s not even about my own walk with God so much as the fact that I just don’t understand how we can not be helping.

What’s funny is that the video on CNN is followed immediately by a commercial for the new Hummer. “The Smaller Hummer” is the tagline.

The Smaller Hummer. This has to be a sign of The End Times. I am absolutely sure of it, even though I do not believe in the End Times as preached by the evangelical church. “This coverage of poor people starving in polluted countries is brought to you by the biggest, ugliest, most in-your-face representation of American avarice we can possibly show you without there being boobies.”

Sometimes the world is so big and confusing, and the face and fact of my own powerlessness overwhelms me.