Three gifts in tin, glass, wood....
So true to form the first thing I thought about was food and the containers they come in....tin cans(I don't even know if they still are tin), glass jars and cardboard (paper made from wood). Now packaged food is a double-edged sword. No other area in the entire world eats more processed food than North America. Nowhere! It is likely the reason that obesity is such a huge problem in this part of the world, and again, a bigger problem than anywhere else in the world. Many of the foods we eat out of packages would be unrecognizable in any other part of the world as well, because it is so processed. But I have traveled a fair bit in the world, SE Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and I don't usually travel the five star way but engage in daily life iwth the locals. And as a result I have seen how they eat...and how they don't.
We live in such abundance here. That is the gift in all the processed food. Some would say we live in excess and perhaps that is true. But whenever I walk through a grocery store I remember the reaction of a refugee family from Sudan that I once took shopping. They literally cried the first time they saw a grocery store at the abundance of food that was there...and then they were completely overwhelmed by the thought that there were 100s of those stores just in this city alone. They had been on the verge of starvation for a number of years due to the political upheaval in their country. It's a good reminder that while we live in this affluence, it comes with a large responsibility...a responsibility to feed the hungry, to bring just a small bit of this abundance to others. Some will say we have our own poor to feed, but that is a falacy...while yes there are poor and hungry here, there are many social programs that they can access for help if they need it. So many countries have no options...such desparation.
How can we ignore the need, when we can fulfill it? It is a gift we have in our hands we can give to others.
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