from page 64, “A pandemic is an epidemic over a wide geographic area that affects a large proportion of the population.  It’s a mega-epidemic.”

Through reading and discussing this book with others, I’ve heard it MULTIPLE times…, “he sure focuses a lot on Africa….aren’t there problems here?…what am I suppose to do?”  Well, Tom does focus a lot on Africa in this particular book because it is THE population group most hard hit by the pandemic of preventable/treatable diseases that is wiping out innocents by the thousands per day.  Consider this statistical data (pg. 64):

“Though the region is home to just over 10 percent of the world’s population, it contains more than 60 percent of all people living with HIV.”

And before we ‘check out’ emotionally because that number is staggering, so big and impersonal, almost too huge to comprehend…as Tom points out, it’s really just a bunch of individual women, children, and men and their own personal stories of suffering all piled in to one big problem that we call pandemic.

So, do we have “problems” here, in the states? Sure we do…and God has a heart for those issues, but let’s keep in mind that for most of those, there are safe places to go for those in need…now, do we have a pandemic affecting upwards of 40% of our population?  Maybe the pandemic of apathy…

I know this has been said before by spokesmen like Bono, but it bears repeating that the entire continent of Africa is on fire - depending on which country you check, between 15 and 43% of the countries’ populations are perishing - and if we do not stand up and do something, we are the priest and the Levite in the story of The Good Samaritan.  There are issues of injustice all over the world, certainly plenty to go around.  So here is my admonition…DO SOMETHING, do anything, for just one cause, and then do it again (or do something else), but don’t stop.  The Chronicle Project slogan says it best, “Everyone Makes a Difference: If everyone does one thing for one issue, the world would be an entirely different place.”

I’ll leave you with this quote from pg.81.

“In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk–better yet, run!–on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere.  And mark that you do this with humility and discipline–not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.” (Ephesians 4:1-3, the Message)