What can a dollar do?

Pay for lunch,

A car,

College.

Well, maybe not a dollar

Though at least it helps.

But while we eat and drive and learn

A child dies from hunger

A woman wishes

For more than a cardboard house

A man prays

For a single pair of shoes.

How can we spend so much

When others have so little?

 

I don’t understand

Why we ignore those in need.

How can we live our own lives,

When we’re called to help the least of these?

Do we need a car for that?

Do we need a four year degree?

How is that important

When the world holds twenty-seven million slaves?

Thousands, millions, billions

Dying from hunger, HIV, AIDs

Why are we overlooking

The family who lives in a cardboard hut

The mother who can’t feed her twelve children

The orphan who suffers from scabies.

 

Do we assume others are helping

That we can’t make a difference?

Are we scared of what we’d have to give up,

Afraid of the sacrifice for true service?

Why do we feel entitled

To our food, our cars, our education

When a child, abandoned

Sits quietly, tearfully out in the rain?

We convince ourselves that we are too small

To impact the world

When all we need to be doing

Is impacting the individual.

Because when it all comes down to it

Are we not all humans, fighting to survive?