source: ohAmanda.com
I have a ten pound bag of rice in my pantry.
It’s not in there because rice is our favorite food.
In fact, we haven’t eaten rice in months because of the diet we choose to follow.
I can’t make myself throw it away. But I don’t eat it. And I don’t really want it. I know I’ll use the rice one day. But for now it’s just taking up space.
Usually this doesn’t bother me much.
Then I read a story about a boy named Phoe. He’s a fourteen year old boy who lives in Yangon City, Burma. When he was just five years old his mother died and his three older siblings were shipped off to their grandparents while he and his little sister stayed with their alcoholic father.
Now, he lives with his unable-to-work father and ten-year-old sister under a bridge. Well, they live there in the daytime until the police come around at night shooing them away.
To provide for his small, shattered family, Phoe collects handmade bamboo baskets from garbage dumps and resells them. If he has a good day, he can collect the equivalent of 70 cents and buy four cups of rice for himself, father and sister to share.
I have a ten pound bag of rice in my pantry.
How did the world get like this? Why can I have an entire closet devoted to food while Phoe struggles to get a bowl of rice once a day?
{Read the rest of Phoe’s story and my full post at the World Vision blog…}
