Seeing our World in 3-D

A few years ago, a friend gave me a book of pictures called stereograms. You have probably seen them, even if you didn't know what they are called. Each picture has a hidden 3-D image. When one completely focuses on the picture, the 3-D image appears. Seeing beyond the surface picture and noticing the 3-D image is called parallel viewing, which is like seeing in stereo.

I was thinking about the water crisis in Sub Saharan Africa in terms of a stereogram. In America, many people live myopic, self-concerned lives.  In a world of 24-7 news, most of it is superficial and focuses on the sensational, and unless we seek it out, we know very little of what is happening in the world. This affluent American life is so far removed from the everyday oppression of living in grinding Third World poverty, that most people here have no frame of reference and cannot relate. We see, but we don't see.

Today, I want to show you a picture of our world. The surface picture has a Four Bucks on the corner and bottled crystal clear water in the fridge, nice car, nice house, a good life. But, look again. Look deeper.. .
As you look intently the picture emerges, the effect of a billion people on this planet having no clean water.

What do you see? Children who are dying from water borne diseases, one every 15 seconds, women and girls who are lacking educational and economic opportunity because they must travel long distances to obtain water --any water. Poverty, pain, and oppression. Two million people dying each year, all for the lack of clean water. People slipping into eternity without ever having heard of Jesus.

When I first saw a stereogram, I couldn't make out the 3-D image, but once I saw it, I couldn't miss it.  I had the same experience when I saw that the water problem in Sub Saharan Africa is the poverty problem. I cannot go back to not knowing.  But merely knowing that there is deep poverty that is caused by the lack of clean water in Sub Saharan Africa is not enough.

I challenge all of us to not only be people who see this world as God sees it and who care, but to be living expressions of His hands and  heart of compassion toward that world.

Between now and May 15, you have opportunity to get involved in Walk for Water Africa to effect real change in our world that is life-saving and  life-changing, and hope-giving.

http://www.walkforwaterafrica.com/

On the website you can learn more about the need and what we are doing about it. You can learn about how you can get involved.

Walk for Water Africa
May 15, 2010
5 K Walk and 11 K Race
Salem Lake Park
Winston-Salem, NC