Videos and real-life

I'm deeply troubled by what I've been learning about Darfur, at websites such as savedarfur.org, Samaritan's Purse and wikipedia. It is now being reported that the killing in Darfur is the worst large-scale massacre of people since Rwanda. Millions of people in the region have been forced from their homes and become entirely dependent on international aid for their survival. The tales of murder, rape and cruelty are numbing. What is most overwhelming to me though is my sense of utter helplessness.

I'm also troubled by the disparity between how much we've spent as a nation on the war in Iraq vs. how much we've spent to mitigate the suffering in places like Darfur. What does it say about us as a people and what we value?

The tragic absurdity of this comes to me in waves. Last night I was standing in the checkout line at the local Blockbuster video, lazily gazing over the candies and cokes and magazines and videos for sale in all their bright variety. It suddenly hit me that at that same moment, millions of people were sitting under tarps in the dry Sudanese dirt, mourning murdered loved ones and wondering when they would eat again. I felt... ashamed.

So what can I do? I don't know. I know what I want to do. I want to forget about it - tune it out with entertainment and busyness. God, please help me not do that.

I think I'll start by making a contribution to Samaritan's Purse.