Radical Islamists in Somalia tried a 13-year-old girl for adultery when her family brought her to the police because she had been raped. She was stoned to death for her "crime."
Christians in Somalia face persecution from the predominantly Muslim community. One Somali man, who was well-traveled and had studied in Europe, returned to his native country to help his people by establishing a school - only to be killed because he had converted from Islam to Christianity.
Just a few small stories from one small country; there are millions of other lives and stories like these, stories of people suffering from persecution, disease, and poverty.
All I hear about on the news each evening is our own "economic crisis." How times are so hard that Americans are having to cut back to "only" eating out once or twice a week, or trading childcare with friends instead of paying full-time nannies. Even those with real hardship - with foreclosed homes or dependence on food stamps - cannot compare their problems with the lives of those in third-world countries who cannot afford one meal a day, and have no shelter or food pantry to turn to. Twenty percent of the world's population lives in absolute poverty.
Can you even imagine what it's like to be in a constant state of hunger? With no walls around you and no roof over your head, no clothes to provide even a little warmth? No prospect of an education to help you overcome your circumstances, and no hopes of even imagining a life that could be different from the poverty-stricken one you know? Can you imagine being a mother or a father unable to feed your children or provide them with health care and the education they would need to overcome the life they were born into?
I can't really imagine it.
Makes our problems seem a little insignificant, doesn't it?
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