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Okay, if your church is on the same gospel schedule as mine, you’ll know this is rather late. However, I wanted to have time to do this post justice.

At the end of September (I said it was late), the gospel reading at church was Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man and Lazarath, a very poor man.

The rich man had more than he could ever need; Lazarath would have been content to eat the scraps of the rich man’s table. Yet the rich man did not think of poor Lazarath.

Lazarath and the rich man died. Lazarath went to heaven, but the rich man went to hell. The rich man saw Lazarath in heaven with Abraham and asked for just a bit of water to wet his parched tongue. But he received nothing, as he gave nothing in his life. So instead, he asks that Abraham send Lazarath to warn his brothers, so that they may be spared. Abraham responds that the word of Moses and the prophets should be enough.

Our deacon’s response to this story was incredibly thought provoking.

Now, the rich man likely wasn’t a bad man. He probably was not malicious, he just simply did not think about people like Lazarath. He was probably just really busy.

Are you really busy? You probably are. The deacon sited a few studies that showed that the average person spends over two hours a day on their phone doing non-verbal stuff (so texting, surfing the web, etc). He also mentioned that Netflix has over 40 million members world wide.

We are a lot like the rich man. We spend all this time on the computer and our phones, then say we have no free time (I am totally guilty of this). We spend money on Netflix and cable, then say there is no room in our budget.

But what if we used that time and money for something good? What if just one day a week, instead of spending two hours on the phone, we volunteered? That’s only 17 minutes a day less. How many lives could we touch with those two hours?

Or what if 400 people, just 1/100000, or .001%, of the people with a Netflix account, decided to donate that money to charity instead? In just one month, that would be $3200 dollars. It may not seem like much, but over time, that money can contribute so much to a community.

This is something incredibly important to think about and be aware. Don’t be the rich man; don’t let the poor and underprivileged go uncared for.

Think about it and tell me in the comments: What is one thing you could give up or reduce in your life, in order to give your time or money to charity?

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