What a beautiful world

Based on an article in the Naperville Club Bulletin, Feb. 2001, by Joel G. Friedl, Club TOF Chairman.

I am sitting here in an airplane traveling at approximately 500 miles per hour at an altitude of 30, 000 feet above the earth. We just had a nice hot beef dinner with wine and coffee, and in a few minutes there will be a movie shown. As I sit here with my laptop starting up, I am watching a beautiful sunset on the horizon. After I land, I will be picking up a new rental car to use for the week, and I will be staying in a five star hotel. At the conference I will be treated to three large meals a day, and snacks during the breaks. I will probably eat more food this coming week than I would normally eat at home for one month. When the day is done I can either watch a movie in my room on the cable TV or go for a swim in the heated pool or hot tub. Return to my room take a nice hot shower, hook up my computer to get my emails from work, and then get a good night sleep on my king size bed.

When the conference is completed I will hop on a plane for my flight home, pick up my luggage, get my car out of the airport parking lot, and drive to our new condo in downtown Chicago. The whole 1200-mile trip will only take me 2 - ½ hours. Gosh! Don’t we live in a wonderful world, in the age of unbeatable technology to make our life easier, be more informed, travel great distances which only takes a couple of hours instead of weeks or even months. I can be anywhere in the world and have complete access to talk to anybody by cell phone or internet. We have an abundance of food to eat and a great place to live. This is the perfect time to be alive and enjoy life to its fullest.

Lets take a step backward for a minute. Is this world really that beautiful or are we so immersed in our own well being that we don’t see the other side of the world? Living in a city you see the whole spectrum of people. We see the extremely rich driving around in their BMWs, chauffeured limousines, living in their million dollar penthouses. Then, there are the rich with their Cadillac’s, 65 foot yachts, living in their $500,000.00 homes. Of course, there is also the middle class who drives nice older model cars, have a nice home, and probably both husband and wife work long hours to make ends meet. AH….! But there is also the poor who don’t own a car, live in cardboard boxes somewhere in streets in the winter or in a park bench in the summer. They have no jobs and their day is spent begging for coins to get something to eat. Could you possibly conceive that, if I took this homeless people on the trip I described above, he or she might be in total shock and might think that he/she died and went to heaven?

OK! We live in the computer age, so lets go to the Internet to get some world facts.

World population on 2/1/01: 6,125,650,336;
Death of children under 5 years of age form hunger: 7,000,000;
30 wars and conflicts going around the world killing: 60,000,000;
Living in poverty level of less than S20 a day income: 3,000,000,000;
Total number of people affected by poverty: 3,067,000,000 which is almost 50% of the world population.
Did you know that 200 of the richest people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 2 billion people?

ALL RIGHT! Enough is enough. The world is a horrible state, but what can I do about it? Well, this is the time of the year when Y’s Men and Y’s Women of the world get together and start their fund drive to help the TIME OF FAST PROJECT which will help thousands of people all over the world to get a second chance to life. The TOF funds help to feed the hungry, train them for a job and supply medicine to the ill. And each person that is helped will help several others. It is small dent in the whole world picture of things, but it is a lot better than doing nothing at all. So please reflect on these facts listed above and let God direct you on how much you would like to donate this year.