It was a Saturday afternoon on July 13, 1985. I was taking care of Andrew, an 11 month old and getting ready for a garage sale. While I priced and folded clothes and things I had the T.V. on. While Andrew was taking a nap, God used that day and that time to rock my world!

I was 21 years old and had no idea that God had a message for me on that day. My small-town world would be shattered and I would have my heart broken and my eyes opened.

You see that was the day that Live Aid occurred and was broadcast simultaneously from London and Philadelphia. I was young, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t watch the news because typically it would depress me. That day, this young mom saw moms in Ethiopia watching their children die from starvation and there was not one thing they could do about it as they were dying as well. I had been told growing up as a child to “finish my food, there are starving children in China”. This really bothered me the first time my mom said that to me. I couldn’t believe that ANYONE in this world could be starving and how awful that would be. After all, I was a 100 pound 5 year old and this was totally out of my element!

On this day, I SAW it through the magic of television and I wondered how I, this small-town girl with a very soft heart protected with a very hard heart could have been born in America, blessed with so much and taking so much for granted. Health, food, shoes, family, and shelter.

This was the day I thought, “that mother watching her child die. Tina, that could have been you”. I realize that was just about 30 years ago, but that seed has been in my heart ever since that moment when God broke into my heart with truth.

What brings these thoughts up this week is that we have been looking for a lot of different auto parts and so I have been in the car watching people a lot. This, unfortunately, takes a lot of time, but I have been observing people and life in this Nigerian world. Tuesday I saw a pregnant young woman hawking food. “Hawking” is what some people do here. They have a large container of something that they carry, it could be bananas, rice, peanuts, olives, sunglasses, etc. and they carry it to cars and businesses trying to sell it.

Well, I thought, “this is her world”. She hasn’t been brought up being told that she can be anything she wants to be when she grows up. She is living day to day. She hopes to make enough today to survive another day. Soon she will have a baby to take care of as well. Frequently hawkers also have their baby tied to their back as they go about trying to scrape enough money for another day.

This is my thought for today: Are you counting your blessings today? How has God broken your heart and opened your eyes? Are you doing anything about it?