In Deuteronomy 22, it says several times to not ignore your neighbors’ needs.  In the NASB, it uses the words, ‘pay no attention to them’.  And in the Message it says, ‘don’t look the other way’.  Oh, how many times we been tempted to make believe we didn’t see a need perhaps because we didn’t have the time to tend to it, or the money, or frankly, just didn’t care – and we looked the other way.

Since the Lord led me to Romania nearly 16 years ago, the word ‘need’ was truly defined for me as I had never known it before.  In the States, we have so many ‘needs’, or so we think.  It turns out that most are just ‘wants’.  In reality our ‘needs’ are few.  I had never in my life seen such dire ‘need’ as I was watching before my eyes in Romania.  Many, many people eat once a day (some not even that often), most just once a day (bread and maybe jam on it, with tea), and others rarely more than just twice a day.  At that, our one serving plate would feed four in Romania.

I just read that there are two billion people in this world who are poor to desperation.  There are one billion people who go to bed hungry every night, hundreds of thousands who die every day from preventable diseases, AND 163,000,000 orphans in the world!   (Other sources nearly double all these numbers!)

Several times when I have been speaking in different churches and to various groups, I have shared the deep needs that I see especially in the villages of Romania.  And I have said several times that I don’t know if I can be of help in a particular situation, but one thing that I do know is – “I can’t look the other way”!

In the future, I don’t want any of my grandchildren coming to me telling me that they had read the statistics of the world’s problems in my ‘era’ and saying, “Mammie, what did YOU do about it?”  I believe that as Christians we have an enormous duty/responsibility to be ‘Jesus-in-skin’ no matter in what time or place we may be.  And, the best part is to be able to serve Him through others in His name and for His glory.  I would encourage each of us to ask the Lord for the opportunity to be His hands and feet, eyes and heart daily – and ‘don’t ever look the other way’.