What a Relief?

It always amazes me how much people get behind raising money for Comic Relief. On Friday they raised over £57,000,000 for the poor and needy in this country and abroad.

I always find the transition between hysterically funny entertainment and heart wrenching stories from Africa a bit hard to cope with. I watched one video of a celebrity in a maternity ward of an African hospital. The cameras panned across cot after cot of tiny malnourished babies, some only a few hours old. They gave all of us watching the statistic that in that part of Africa 1 in 8 mothers die in child birth, whilst in the UK it less than 1 in 8000. The short video still had a sting in the tale as the cameras once again focused on a baby fighting for its life, it eventually lost the fight.

 

I am left puzzling over this thought, is it worse that people in the world are suffering like this or that we see people suffering like this and just forget about them in a matter of days. We can spend a whole evening riding a wave of emotion whilst watching Comic Relief, but then forget all about it by the following Friday. It is almost as if we think that we’ve pledged our little bit of money so it’s someone else’s problem now.

 

My challenge to you this week and beyond is to make time to pray, fun raise and raise awareness of the suffering that is going on in the world around us.

Don’t let it be just a flash in the pan, make an effort to continue helping your brothers and sisters around the world. Don’t wait another 2 years for the next Comic Relief, instead always keep looking for ways to change your world.