No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I have the privilege of serving on the board of the development agency World Renew. They are anticipating some significant fallout from the Covid 19 pandemic and are trying to ready themselves for the fact that many of the communities where they are currently serving and likely others that we will be made aware of, are going to suffer from the shrinkage in the global economy in very dramatic ways.
So, what does this mean for the charities that we support? I think it means staying committed to the causes that we have traditionally given to. It means reaching deep at a time when we may tend to be cautious even about our own finances. That's understandable. Just maybe the thing that we are being called to at this time is really going to stretch us, in ways that we have not until now imagined. I'm going to play the Walter Brueggemann string in my fiddle again. The One who holds all this has from the beginning embedded the good earth with abundance, even in Covid years, even in drought. Now is not the time to settle back into the toilet paper myth that there won't be enough to go around. When you share your n95 masks, there are always enough to go around. When you horde for yourself, there will be a shortage.
Join me this morning, or whenever you are reading this, get online and find a development agency that you know is doing this kind of good work in the world and reach deep into the well of that abundance. Send this on to others in your network who might wish to live abundantly.
Thanks to G. for the Washington Post article on this issue.