For Wilshire Baptist Church
Child One: “Let’s take turns.”
LeAnn: “Hmm . . . so what would that look like to take turns?”
Child Two: “It would look like we were sharing.”
That was the conversation in worship care Sunday morning at Wilshire. I was sweeping cracker crumbs from under the tables while LeAnn was sitting on the floor with the seven four-year-olds who had decided it was dress-up time. Some were sorting through superhero capes and other costumes, while some were looking at a pair of fancy shoes. The problem was there were not enough shoes for each child to wear a complete pair at the same time. After LeAnn prompted them to testify about sharing, the conundrum they faced was how best to share: Does each child get a turn at wearing both shoes, or do they each get one shoe at the same time?
And there it is — a question we grownups face often: What does sharing look like? To be honest, it doesn’t look very good sometimes. If we agree upfront to wear both shoes and then let someone else have them, we’re hesitant or slow to give them up once they’re on our feet. In fact, if nobody is monitoring us, we might never hand them over. Meanwhile, if we share one shoe and walk around with just the other, we complain about being hobbled and inconvenienced.
Of course, shoes are just a symbol for a full range of basic necessities that many in our communities lack because we have trouble sharing: nutritious food, clean water, education, healthcare, and safe and affordable housing to name a few. Some of these not only are required to meet basic physical needs, but they can be major contributors to equal opportunity, justice and human dignity if we’d just figure out how to share.
One of the most urgent needs for sharing is food, according to Eugene Cho, president of Bread for the World. Speaking recently at Fellowship Southwest’s first Compassion and Justice Conference in Dallas, Cho said we’re living in one of the worst global food crises in the last 50 years. Some 740 million people worldwide live with food insecurity, and approximately 45 million experience “wasting,” where their body literally is wasting away from a lack of food and nutrition.
“And here’s, I think, the most difficult part of the story: There’s enough food in the world,” he said. In the United States alone, as much as 35 percent of the food produced is thrown away rather than consumed. For that reason, Bread for the World is working with legislators in Washington on the Food Date Labeling Act, a bill that would end consumer confusion about food date labeling that leads to useable food going in the trash when it could be shared.
In his song “Imagine,” John Lennon sang:
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.
That song was released 52 years ago, and we’re still struggling with how to share.
However, all is not lost. If North Texas Giving Day is any indication, sharing is not totally dead. This year more than 97,000 donors gave $63.9 million to local nonprofits that work on a host of issues and needs in our region – including feeding the hungry and putting shoes on feet.
For the record, the children in worship care had a hard time negotiating a sharing strategy that suited everyone. One was satisfied to have just one shoe but walked away shoeless when the other wanted to wear both. Sharing is hard at that age, and it only gets harder.
Still, I believe these kids will be fine, because when they were engaged in a musical game that let each one lead their friends in a round, they all took turns with no problems. And that may be the key to successful sharing: looking outward at the group as equals rather than focusing inward and downward on our own two feet.