I used to hear preachers talk about “getting uncomfortable” and to be honest I didn’t like it.  Why wouldn’t God want me to be comfortable?  I like being comfortable.  I like predictability, I like stability, and I like warm fuzzy socks.

I am in this weird place I don’t know how to describe.  I read books like, Kisses from Katie where a 19 year old girl left EVERYTHING she knew to be comfortable and lives in Uganda.  She is now 22 and mother to 13 once orphaned little girls.  I hear stories of friends who just last week returned from Honduras where they saw countless houses made of magazines, and scrap wood with no electricity and plumbing.

I see pictures like this:

I read radical too and that probably didn’t help.

It cost $20 a quarter to send a Ugandan child to school (including their meals).  Yet that cost is 4 times the cost of their electricity or plumbing which many of them can’t afford anyway.  Lack of education just continues the cycle of poverty.

We can spend more than $20 going out to eat for ONE meal!

It just makes me, well, uncomfortable ya know?

I love nice things as much as the next girl.  I don’t think smart phones are sinful, and I love our home.

But I just can’t help but see things differently.  It is uncomfortable.  It would be much easier to ignore.  I don’t see poverty around me everyday.  I don’t personally know any starving children.

And I think that’s the problem.

I have heard it said it is not that we don’t care about the poor, it is that we don’t know them.  Just this glimpse from books and stories from missionaries makes me WANT to know them more.

But it’s messy helping the poor.  They need soo much, some need more than you can give, some are looking for handouts, and some are dirty.  It isn’t always safe, some have disease and some are unkind.

But God doesn’t just ask us to help if we have nothing else to do, He commands it…of all of us.

As Katie Davis said, “I am not afraid of disease or death, I am much more afraid of being comfortable.”

I guess I am seeing through all of this that comfortable isn’t such a great thing after all.  A restless hunger to do more to the least of these isn’t comfortable.  From the small amount I have experienced helping, it is pretty messy and time consuming too. But it is so much better than staying comfortable.

Part of me wants to sleep on the floor and skip meals out of guilt, but I know that solves nothing. 

Lord, break my heart until it moves my hands and feet.  Open my eyes to see your love for ALL people.  May I worry less about being comfortable and more about being used by the King of the universe to do great things. 

I can’t change the world, but I can start with one.  Making a difference for ONE person…can change that person’s world.