Blessings to Bridge Society's Inequality

For my morning devotion on 20 May 2011

Today, I was speaking with my class about 'blessings' and it brought to mind a possible reason why God seems to bless some people more than others. Is it because He loves some people more than He loves those others? Nope, not true at all.

Imagine a world in which every one of us has $10million in our bank accounts, the same identical bungalow house and the same Rolls Royce car for everyone as soon as we are born into the world. What will such a world, such a life, be like? No one will be poor, no one will be hungry. None of us will be in need of anything. Everyone will just mind their own business, do their own things, lead their own lives, and guard their money and possessions so tightly for fear of being robbed. On the surface, it seems that such a life is peaceful and happy since we have all the material things we need.

But if we were to lead such a life, we will never ever come to understand and experience what it means to share, to love, to care, to give, to be selfless and kind, generous and compassionate. We will never come to understand and experience what it means to receive, to be loved, to be cared for, to know that we are important to someone else, that we matter and that we’re not just another person walking by on the surface of this planet. We will never ever be able to experience goodness and thereby, we will never get a chance come to know the loving, caring and forgiving God we have. Our lives will be plain, as bland as a bowl of plain porridge boiled without salt or oil.

Take a look at our world; there are the rich people and the poor people. This is a good opportunity for the rich to share their wealth with those who are poor. Will this not give us joy in our hearts from the act of sharing and caring?

Then, there are those who are starving because they do not have money to buy food, and there are those who have so much to eat that they end up throwing away the leftovers. In Singapore, we love to go for buffet lunches and dinners. We eat till we are so starved with food like a Christmas Turkey and we can barely stand up to walk. This difference opens up the opportunity for us to share our food with those who are suffering or dying of starvation.

Going further, there are those who are born intelligent and those who are born with special needs and physical handicaps. God has purposely created this great opportunity for those who are more gifted to stretch out your hands to those who need your encouragement and affirmation that they are not useless but they, too, have the chance to live with dignity and respect as a fellow human person.

If any of us actually think that we are better than others because we are more capable, smarter, live in a bigger house, drive a more expensive car, then we have no idea how wrong we are. There is a far bigger world outside of the well we have been squatting in for the longest time. This is not what our blessings and our gifts are for. Instead, they are for us to share with those who have less or who have none. They are for us to use to bring about peace, joy, harmony, happiness and love when we share, care and give.

I would like to end off today’s reflection with an image of a waterfall. Here is the Niagara. Imagine that you are standing at the bottom of this waterfall. Up on the cliff, there must be so much water in the river that it overflows over the cliff to become the waterfall in front of you. And you hear the sound of the gushing waters thundering through the air. What a magnificent, beautiful and captivating sight!! It just takes your breath away. Like this waterfall, may the many, many blessings we have been given throughout our lives overflow abundantly and selflessly from our hearts into the lives of the less fortunate, the oppressed and the suffering in our society. God bless us all.


19 May 2011, Thursday
10.44pm