Like many people on Facebook, I intended to write, each day in November, about something for which I was thankful . My first post stated that I would be giving thanks for those things that I or my friends had lived without during my year in Ghana. First there was water, then electricity. My Ghanaian friend Prince commented that we should not be thankful for other's misfortune. I quickly replied that we should always be thankful for what God has given us and be willing to share with others. But then I had this nagging feeling. Maybe Prince had a point. Do we console ourselves with the idea that thankfulness entitles us to excess materialism? How much is too much and how much do we need to share with others to call it good?
It is such a cliche to say if you haven't seen the poverty in a place like Africa, then you cannot understand. It is a further cliche to say, "and yet they are so happy and thankful!". But it is a cliche that is so very true. How does one describe the poverty when we have been inundated with images of starving children and have become immune? I knew women personally who carried water from a nearby well to their homes. They were my friends, real people. I had students who, if they could have anything in the world for their birthday, wanted chicken and rice. I knew the children I caught going through my garbage for vegetable scraps and the students who begged to take my apple core to the garbage so they could eat it on the way. There were students who became ecstatic when they were given slightly used pocket folders. But my worst day in Ghana was the day I noticed a young girl, about 9 or 10, holding her starving and sick little sister. I just happened to turn my head and see her as I was walking to the church. I asked if I could hold the baby and she was handed to me. Many times I had felt that fever in a child there! Hot to the touch, malaria. But it was not just malaria. The child was almost lifeless, thin and rigid. I went to the door of the church and asked for the doctor. We sent the older sister to get the mother, took them to the pharmacist and purchased medicine. A week later I learned that the baby had died the next day. A way of life. In fact, it is tradition not to name a baby till the parents know that the child "will be staying".
In light of all this, is it arrogant to thank God for water and electricity? I have done absolutely nothing to deserve what I have been given. I was born in America to parents who loved and cared for me. I went to good schools, for free, because I lived in good neighborhoods. I have eaten every day of my life. This was all before I even had the chance be deserving or not. Why me Lord? What makes me different from that young girl, born in northern Ghana, who probably cannot attend school, who may not get even one meal a day; who, on that Sunday morning, stood in my pathway to church holding her dying sister. I wondered often if she missed her sister. What did she feel that day and in the days after? What did the mother feel? And why did God put me here and them there?
I have struggled with these questions in the three years since I left Ghana. At times I can honestly say it has been a weight bearing down on me. After three years I still don't have the answers, just these thoughts:
1. To be "on our knees" humbly grateful for the love, the opportunities and the many, many blessings we have been given.
2. To enjoy and delight in what we have been given; to taste, feel, see and experience it.
3. To get off this crazy merry-go-round of materialism, of having more and more of the biggest and best.
4. And lastly, to give from our abundance to others who have less.
Freely you have received, freely give. Whether you believe in a God who gives, in Karma, or that life is one big dice game, most of us will have to admit that we have been given an abundance undeservedly. At this time of thanksgiving and the Christmas season to come I want to keep these four things in mind. Maybe I should post them the bathroom mirror or in my car to read every day for I quickly forget in this crazy whirlwind of life, then a face from Ghana comes back to remind me and the questions start again.
