Near The Floor

It was May of 2007 when I took a side trip, while in China, to go and visit some dear friends of mine, located in Tajikistan. I wanted to see what they were doing and see what the country was like. During the delightful time I was there I had to sleep on the floor. Well, it was not really on the floor because there was something soft between me and the floor as shown in the following picture.

I mention that because I went to visit family in Western New York state and stayed in the house that my mother and father used to live in. They have both passed way, but we have not sold the house yet. We had to clean out the house, do some repair work and make some upgrades before selling it. That work has been done and the new owners will call it their home in February if things go as planned.

As you can see in the above picture, my sleeping location was very similar to the first picture and again I realized how little we need to live and to live with comfort. I think of the homeless who sleep on concrete. I even think of many in China who sleep on a Chinese bed, which according to western standards is very hard, and think it is the way it should be.

It is too bad we have kept so much wealth for ourselves to have bigger and better things when so many have nothing to sleep on in the world. Then in our greed we started borrowing to have more. By going in debt we started giving our wealth away, not to the poor who needed it so badly, but to those who would make money off our debt. If only we had given to the poor and stayed out of debt we wouldn't be in the financial mess we are in now and many would not be living in poverty or have died. You don't violate God's laws and not experience problems. You always will. As a people and as a nation, we have strayed so far from God I don't think we will recover this time. It breaks my heart to think that, but I think time will prove me right.