Spinning Head

Right now my head hurts. Or more accurately, my heart.

Here's the thing: today I spent $60 on anti-malaria meds. I'm so thankful for health insurance. If we didn't have the coverage that we did, we would have paid $74 dollars more. According to the World Health Organization, over 1 million people die each year from malaria. Most of these deaths occur in developing countries. Cause of death is due to lack of preventative knowledge, lack of resources, lack of money and/or medicine.

Oh how that makes this girl's heart heavy.

Another thing. For a brief second today, I was lamenting the fact that we can't eat the free meal at Chick-fil-A due to Barlow Girl's food allergies. Oh good gravy, I complained that we couldn't get a free meal. What is wrong with me?

Check out these hunger facts from World Vision:

Global Hunger & Poverty

• Each day, over 26,000 children under the age of 5 die from preventable diseases such as malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and acute respiratory infections. Malnutrition is associated with over half of those deaths.
• More than 840 million people in the world don't get enough to eat. That's one of every seven people on the planet.
• 143 million children under age 5 in the developing world are underweight because of poor nutrition. That's about one in three children in developing countries.
• In the last 50 years, 400 million people worldwide have died from hunger and poor sanitation. That's three times the number of people killed in all wars fought in the entire 20th century.
• Moderately underweight children are more than four times more likely to die from infectious disease than are well-nourished children. And under-nutrition contributes to 53 percent of deaths among children under 5 globally.
• Countries in which a large portion of the population battles hunger daily are usually poor and often lack the social safety nets we enjoy, such as soup kitchens, food stamps, and job training programs. When a family that lives in a poor country cannot grow enough food or earn enough money to buy food, there is nowhere to turn for help.
• Of the 6.6 billion people in today's world, 2.1 billion live on less than $2 per day.

Scripture that I'm meditating on today:

Isaiah 58:6-8

6 “Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.