Huge Hurricane Relief Gift Coming to Sugar Land

An email from half way around the world announced that hurricane relief was on its way to Sugar Land, Texas.  The email came from Mbarara, Uganda.  They had heard about Hurricane Ike and that members of our church had suffered damage.  They wanted to help.  So they decided that they would give today's entire contribution to help.  Their usual weekly church contribution is about $11, but this week through sacrificial giving, they contributed more than twice that much, a little over $24.  They're sending it all, in a money order, to our church to help our members.

The absurdity of this situation has to be clear to you.  The poorest member of our church in Sugar Land has vast wealth compared to even the wealthiest member of the church in Mbarara.  While $24 is a very significant amount of money in Mbarara, it's probably not enough to replace one section of fence in Sugar Land.  They know that in Mbarara, and we know that in Sugar Land.

The only story I know that is more absurd is the one in the Bible that tells of the widow giving her two mites in the Temple contribution, and Jesus remarking that that her two mite contribution was greater than all of the large contributions put in that day by the wealthy.

Absurb stories by the way we usually measure things, by the way we usually value things.  But not when measured by the heart behind the gift. 

This is a huge gift when measured by the heart.  I'm touched by their compasion for people half way around the world, by their desire to do what they can to help, to express their compasion in a concrete way. 

And I'm forced to re-examine my own expressions of compasion in light of both the folks in Mbarara and the widow.

Posted by email from Alright! (posterous)