The other day my wife and I were in a local Tim Horton's (coffee and donut shop for you non-Canuks) with our great niece ("great" as in "daughter of a niece", who also happens to a great little girl) and I happened to look up to see, on the wall beside us, a poster imploring people to make the right nutritious choices when picking foods. It hit me, at that instant, how blessed we are to be living in a time and place where such choices are not only possible, but are taken for granted, like the air we breath. (Yes, it did also seem incongruous to have such a poster in a donut shop, of all places.)
I don't know what the correct statistics are but I would hazard a guess that 70% of the world's population do not have such choices. And I'm not just talking about rural China or Uganda or Afghanistan. There is a significant proportion of our own communities who ask not whether they've had enough carbs (or fiber or protein) today but whether they'll get any food at all today.
My intention here is not to make you feel guilty if you are one of the fortunate ones who have never felt the pain of hunger or the despair of no foreseeable way out of the hole. Your situation is what it is. It is not the issue. What I do want to do is to remind you that there are people who need help, and perhaps you are the one who can help.
I do not say you "owe" anyone anything. I do not even say it is anyone's "duty" to help, but you and I were put on this Earth for a reason and perhaps it is to help others, perhaps not. You must look within yourself to see what your life's purpose is. But while you're doing that, would it hurt to take a bag or two of groceries down to the local food bank or shelter? (If you don't know where your local food bank is drop them off at any local church. They'll know what to do with it.)
We need to work off some of that Christmas turkey, anyways, so why not haul a couple of bags of groceries to people who really need it. It'll do us both some good.
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