coppers

I have just been delivering envelopes for Christian Aid as this is Christian Aid Week. I have been involved in this door-to-door collection for more years than I can remember. Each year I have the same feelings of despair and not-wanting-to-do-it-ness, but then each year delivering leaftlets reminds me of the year I spent delivering Her Majesty's Royal Mail. And although repetitive, it isn't too bad - you can learn a lot about people from their letterboxes. Collecting is another ballgame, but I'll have more more help then.

Collecting copper coins in the face of global hunger seems so futile. When someone I know is dodging bullets in Gaza it seems a crazy response. I don't mean to criticise the work of Christian Aid - nor even to suggest that it is worse in Gaza than in other areas of conflict and hunger.

But really. And the crazy thing is that there are so few people who are even prepared to be involved in something as simple and as stupid as walking around a few houses and collecting coppers.

Is this the glorious gospel we proclaim? That the people of God go to work to earn enough money to have a large TV? That they can share in the collective grief of the loss of a small child they don't even know and yet meanwhile the community around them dies. And people around the world go hungry for the sake of a few coppers. And people kill each other because all hope is lost.