Something More!

Each year our Stake has an annual Humanitarian Activity right around school time, when all the supplies are on sale, for us to purchase and help fill school bags.  These will go to SLC and be sent throughout the world.  some of the supplies will will be donated to local schools.

There I was at Wal-Mart checking the supply list and putting the requested/suggested items in my cart.  They were great prices and I enjoyed checking things off the list. Boxes and packages quickly piled up.

My mind kept losing focus.  I was battling within trying to quiet thoughts of....People are starving in Somalia.  Parents are burying children daily.  There is no food available.  No water.  No medicine.  I remembered the slide show I saw online, with Mothers holding skeletal children, so near death.  Children with flies crawling all over their face. It makes me tear up.

Here I am buying pencils and crayons and pencil sharpeners and black ink pens and all sorts of school goodies.  Here I am also thinking of the fabric I ordered for those quilts, the money I spent, that possibly the material will just stay flat folds of fabric.  But really where my heart is, where my sorrow is...starvation and deprivation throughout the world.  No woman, in my circle of friends in the sisterhood of RS, could resist sharing and caring for a dirty starving child within her vision.  It's the reaching around the world, that seems to be the perplexity that borders at time on casualness, on my part, in the take action department.   

I do not wonder where God is and why He allows this to happen and why He doesn't fix this.  That is not the answer.  I am His hands.  I am the answer.  If it's to be... it's up to me.  If not me?...who?   If not now?...when?

It's balance and perspective, don't you think?  I can do with less.  I can buy a few less school supplies.  I can use the fabric I have on hand with the new fabric I ordered and not buy more.  I can be more frugal in my spending and determine to give more to the Humanitarian fund.  To increase that small consistent amount to a bit more.

I am responsible for the poor.  I am to seek them out.  I was stunned when I went with the Bishop to a welfare meeting some time back and that is what we were told-- Do not wait for the poor to seek you out.  You seek out the poor. 

We will always have the poor with us.  that is scriptural.  Also to know to do good and to do it not?...that is sin.  that is also scriptural.

I need to pick it up a notch in making a difference in the world in small increments.  Perhaps very small but nonetheless...Something!!!

As the hymn says....

Have I Done Any Good?

(Sung Brightly)

 1. Have I done any good in the world today?
Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad and made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.
Has anyone’s burden been lighter today
Because I was willing to share?
Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?
When they needed my help was I there?

[Chorus]
Then wake up and do something more
Than dream of your mansion above.
Doing good is a pleasure, a joy beyond measure,
A blessing of duty and love.

2. There are chances for work all around just now,
Opportunities right in our way.
Do not let them pass by, saying, “Sometime I’ll try,”
But go and do something today.
’Tis noble of man to work and to give;
Love’s labor has merit alone.
Only he who does something helps others to live.
To God each good work will be known.

[Chorus]
Then wake up and do something more
Than dream of your mansion above.
Doing good is a pleasure, a joy beyond measure,
A blessing of duty and love.

Text and music: Will L. Thompson, 1847–1909, alt.

James 1:22, 27

Alma 9:28