Speak Up!

HEART //  

Imagine with us, for a moment, that you’re on the back of a truck, in the hot sun in Niankore, Burkina Faso, in western Africa. You’re standing on 10 tons of corn, surrounded by people with tickets, each to receive a bag of corn that would sustain their starving family for a time. As the sun stretches across the sky, you carry, with your own hands, this heavy corn and pass it into the hands of these beautiful people... knowing the weight of this corn will relieve, for a time, the oppressive weight of hunger and uncertainty that they carry around daily. They have families, much like yours, and you try to imagine your roles being reversed. The leader of the project comes to you and says, “There is enough food for about 10 more people.” You look and see 100-200 more people in line! In his thick African accent, your leader says to you, “You pick 10.” Where do you begin??? 

Chris Coakley, the founder of Grain of Hope, shares this true story that happened to him. 

“I was immediately overwhelmed by this task. I kept thinking, ‘What if I pick the wrong person?’ I was advised to begin with the elderly, then move to the women with children. Forever in my heart will be burned the experience of walking through the crowd trying to find the older ladies that the Lord was leading me to. Praying the whole time, ‘Please don’t let me choose the wrong person, please don’t let me choose the wrong person.’ I will never forget how it felt to turn away women who could have been my own grandmother. After I had picked a few, the crowd began to realize that I was in charge of handing out the last bit of food. They began closing in on my African brother, Robert, and I, not violently, but because they just wanted a chance to be chosen. We were both crying at this point and I looked at Robert and I asked him how he did this week in and week out? He just looked at me and said, ‘This is life. This is what it is like to live in Burkina.’

We knew that we had to come up with a longer-lasting solution. If we were truly going to make a difference we would have to invest our time and effort into speaking up for these families who have no voice in the world by mentoring, taking care of the earth, and working together. Today, Grain of Hope does just that, one community at a time, in the hungriest parts of the world.”

There are thousands of others who are ensnared by poverty and do not have anyone who will speak up for them. While there is much that we cannot do, there are things that we can do... things that we must do. John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, once said, “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” We must speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. We must defend the rights of the poor and needy. This is the only way to find true life. 

WORK //

Today, speak up to your friends, family, or on social media by sharing a story or a statistic about someone who is in poverty and has been displaced from their home. Pray that as people hear about these things, they would also be moved to learn and share. As you go somewhere today carrying a bag of rice or sand on your shoulder, use it as an opportunity to tell people what you are doing, why you are doing it, and about those in poverty who are walking miles to get their water. 

How has your experience been carrying around a bag of rice or sand? How was carrying around a dirty water bottle? What has God taught you this week as you have empathized with those who have to walk miles to just get food or water? 

that we didn’t even have enough to give to the older women that where there waiting.