The Amusement Park World of Poverty

It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all.”

That little ditty resonates through my head as I try to put my thoughts in order. It may be small in the ability to communicate and travel. The message that we are all one people rings hollow. We are rich and poor. There are two worlds not one.

The images of two worlds: One I understand all too well, the other I will never grasp. Which world is reality? Which is the nightmare? Which the fairy tale?

I wonder if someone had created an Amusement Park dedicated to poverty, what would it look like, feel like and sound like? Could they ever match what has been created in the developing world?

Would anybody want to take the trip to Adventureland?

Over here is Trickle Mountain. In the next few hours you will travel over a mountain to retrieve a few buckets of water from a small stream. You will return with just enough water for your family to survive until the next day.

The real Splash Mountain must have more water going through it than some people see in a lifetime.

Or, let’s take a ride on the “SUV Highway.” You drive up goat paths with 300 feet sheer drops and take rocky roads that have less asphalt than your driveway at home. If your truck doesn’t get across a rushing, swollen river, the ride is tragically over.

Over here is the longest line in the park. Look at all those children with reddish hair and extended bellies waiting with small cups in their hands. This is the feeding program ride where they stand in the heat for hours waiting for a bowl of rice. The expectation far exceeds the actual food. It is like waiting hours for a roller coaster ride that lasts just 60 seconds. What’s the point?

Over there is Tomorrowland. What is the concept of tomorrow when today is the only true reality? Space Mountain means nothing to these children. What is space? What is an astronaut?

Ask a child in the developing world what they want to do when they grow up. They will never answer a doctor or a lawyer. Maybe they think about being a teacher or a pastor or maybe a soccer player. More than likely, they don’t have an answer. They just want to survive long enough to think about it some more.

Everything runs so efficiently in Amusement Parks. The buses run on time, the workers are immaculate in their uniforms and always with a smile. Problems are fixed almost immediately. The purpose of your stay is to have the best time possible so you will come back again.

It’s a shame governments don’t run so efficiently. The purpose of your stay in a developing country is to understand frustration and injustice.

Where is God in all this poverty? Where is God in all this materialism? He exists in all of it. But, Oh Lord have mercy; the clutter that impedes our being able to see Him, to feel Him, to know Him.

In this Advent let us prepare the way for our own hearts to see Jesus Christ in a new way that opens us up to the world that can’t even imagine Christmas as we know it with all its wonder but with all of its materialistic trappings. Even Charlie Brown in his Christmas Special knows the answer. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the new born King.”

Craig Cole is the executive director of Five Talents International, an Anglican microfinance nonprofit. He is also a member of Diocese of Virginia's Mission Commission and an EGR board member.

I Thirst

These two simple words are displayed next to the cross that hangs in many of the Missionaries of Charities homes around the world. At least, in the several I have visited.

The simplicity of the words are astonishing upon reflection. Yet, considering the King of Kings came wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. Little packages, or a few words, can have tremendous significance.

“I thirst.” The words make me tremble.

Before I became executive director of Five Talents, I worked for a relief and development organization that had projects in the Caribbean, West Indies and Latin America and many of those projects were with the Missionaries of Charity, the organization founded by Mother Teresa.

And, I was trembling the first time I walked into a Missionaries of Charity home. It was a home for the elderly in Georgetown, Guyana. I had never liked “old folks.” As a teenager growing up in suburban Chicago, Christmas time meant caroling at the elderly home down the street. I went, but I made sure I was in back of the group. I made no eye contact and when the singing was done, I shuffled my feet instead of greeting the men and women and handing out cookies. I was always scared.

Now, it was my job. I had to go in. I had to talk to them and find the stories to tell our donors.

I came into the room in the women’s ward in this old wooden 2-story building. I put on my best fake smile, which was really just gritting my teeth. They were so desperate for attention. They thought the smile was real. They were enthusiastic and so warm in their greeting.

I ended up sitting next to a woman, who was so frail she could hardly sit up. Her face etched with the lines of age, her mouth almost toothless and her hands wrinkled and thin. She reached out her hand and I had no choice but to take it. I was afraid her fingers might break they were so frail. I held it like a feather in my hand, caressing ever so gently. The next few minutes were so, gentle and peaceful, I knew if God had so much as whispered I would have heard him. We were generations and worlds apart sitting together enjoying silence.

Then she nodded and slunk down in her chair, mumbling quietly to herself. I was startled and instantly afraid she might die right there. The sisters quickly came and picked her up and softly put her into her bed and covered her with a sheet. Exhausted, I was told.

“I thirst”

I thirst for that moment of peace and serenity of God’s whisper of God’s connection with others.

Jesus thirsts from the cross, the poor thirst for a simple drink of clean water, and we in suburbia thirst for life-giving water that will quench our souls.

John 19:28-30- Jesus knew that everything was now finished, and to fulfill the Scriptures said. “I’m thirsty.” A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so a sponge was soaked in it and put on a hyssop branch and help up to his lips. when Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished,” and bowed his head and dismissed his spirit.

Craig Cole is the executive director of Five Talents International, an Anglican microfinance nonprofit. He is also a member of the Diocese of Virginia's Mission Commission and an EGR board member.