Rev. Todd C. Foster

CONSIDER turning on the television today to hear the emergency broadcast that 100 jetliners had crashed, killing 26,500 people.

The urgency to respond immediately would be unprecedented, a global outcry. The world would effectively stop until the cause and a solution were found.

In our world today, that number of children died of preventable causes related to their poverty. It will happen again tomorrow, and daily thereafter. There are no breaking news reports, and very few pulpits decry the largely avoidable pogrom-by-neglect.

Is it that the sacred cry for justice only extends as far as U.S. borders? In God’s eyes, every life is valued the same. When we ask him why he allows people to suffer so from extreme poverty, he poses the same question to us.

He’s given us the wherewithal to do something about it, and expects that we will indeed do so.

Perhaps, extreme global poverty is too abstract a notion for us to grapple with. The bloated bellies seen here are more likely signs of excess than advanced stages of nutritional lack — all too familiar in so much of the world. It’s just too far away physically, emotionally and spiritually for us to see.

Yet, God wants us to not only see, but to be moved with compassion. How close must it come before we can feel it? We are those to whom much has been given, and as Jesus forewarned, much is required of us.

What about the more visible, fathomable issues of local poverty? Disparity leading to despair is an issue both near and far.

Despair, even in the most affluent of nations, is a pathway to both diminished life and premature death. While there is a major difference between poverty at home and extreme poverty abroad, our concerns and responses should address both. Continued...

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In recessionary times, we are tempted to refrain from benevolence. We fear that there won’t be enough for our needs if we give to those who are in obviously more burdensome straits. We lament that our vacations may need to be reeled in to locales closer to home. The flat screen television we longed for might have to wait for another day. Our satellite radio may have to be sacrificed on the altar of diminished affluence.

Meanwhile, another 100 proverbial planes went down today; mercilessly killing everyone on board.

Our response will absolutely proclaim our faith in terms that matter to God.

The Rev. Todd C. Foster is president of New Haven Help Alliance’s Poor Connection and senior pastor of Church on the Rock, 95 Hamilton St., New Haven, 06511. E-mail: info@poorconnection.org.

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