Inaction

For eight months now I've been wrestling with the issue of poverty -- injustice, unequal distribution of wealth, the disadvantaged, and mostly...inaction. If you've been following this blog you know that I encounter many beggars, including small children, here in Changsha. These experiences and the feeling of not-doing-enough, coupled with blaring conviction coming from the Word, have been steadily gnawing at me.

I often wonder if I'm called to work with the lowest of the low, because this is where my heart is tugged. There is another organization working here in Changsha called International China Concern, which works with orphans, most of whom have disabilities or medical challenges that caused their parents to abandon them.


Have you seen this picture before? It's a Pulitzer Prize winner, captured by photojournalist Kevin Carter in southern Sudan. An emaciated toddler girl is crawling towards a famine-relief feeding center. Carter admits that he spent several minutes framing the shot and waiting for the vulture to open its wings (but it never did). Carter snapped this image on my 7th birthday, March 1, 1993.


What of the little girl? No one knows. Carter admitted inaction. He waited, framed the shot, and walked away.

What of Carter? He committed suicide the next year.


I couldn't look at this picture the first time I saw it. My eyes bounced away quickly, and I didn't get the guts to google it until over two months later -- partially because it is sickening and sad and painful -- partially because the image and the story of the photographer convict me of my own inaction towards the injustice and poverty all around me.

You could uplift me as I sort out what I'm called to do about these convictions. Thank you. And...I hope you feel convicted too.


rach


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