Twenty-plus thoughts & figures & quotes from the first 100 pgs of
Wess Stafford's
(president of Compassion International) book,
Too Small to Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most.
- The wars of the last decade killed more children than soldiers.
- When the sickness of pornography has run to its most evil & destructive end, it takes the form of child pornography.
- When prostitution reaches its sickest, most depraved form, it becomes child prostitution.
- Malnutrition causes more than 55% of the child deaths in our world.
- 30,000 of our little innocents under age five die everyday.
- Fully half the world, & especially in the developing world, are children & teenagers.
- The worst aspects of poverty are not the deplorable outward conditions but rather the erosion & eventual destruction of hope.
- Jesus valued people at both ends of the economic spectrum (honoring the widow who gave her last coin, loving the rich young ruler who couldn't give up everything).
- As wonderful as air-conditioning is, it has made us go inside & close our doors & windows. There we sit, basking in the coolness--but alone, isolated, cut off from our neighbors. Our games for children have moved from the neighborhood summer evenings of hide-and-seek to isolated video games...The more wealth & comfort we gain, the more we lose our sense of community.
- The US suicide rate exceeds the murder rate by 50%.
- We are disconnected, accountable to no one, bereft of counsel & love & shared wisdom...Our children grow up equally isolated...In the absence of human contact, we are trying to substitute virtual relationships on the Internet.
- The individualistic West sometimes have trouble appreciating the Old Testament because its worldview is so keyed on the group.
- The Bible doesn't even have a word for teenager. So when visiting parents come up to me or call the office and ask, "What programs do you have for teenagers?" I smile & say, "We have church!"
- In most of today's Western churches, I know the thought of having children present in the worship service is anathema. God forbid that the holy atmosphere should ever be pierced by a baby's cry.
- E. Stanley Jones said comparing physical & spiritual forms of ministry, one's "a soul without a body" and the other is a "body without a soul. One's a ghost & the other's corpse; you can take your choice. I don't want either one. I want both."
- Corrie ten Boom said, "If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy."
- Americans spend more on garbage bags each year than 90 of the world's 210 countries spend for everything.
- In 1950, the average American single-family home was 983 square feet. By 1970, that figure had grown to 1,500 square feet. By 2004, it had ballooned to 2,329 square feet.
- We patronize more than 35,000 self-storage facilites across the nation for all the extras we're not using now.
- How many of us have lavished toys & clothes & entertainment on our kids to the point of extreme, only to produce selfish, bored, demanding, irritable teenagers?
- You can tell a society is nearing its ultimate collapse when it is consumed with comfort, pleasure, & etertainment, when it no longer feels it needs anything from God, the Creator. The Greeks, Romans, Incas, Aztecs, & soon perhpas Western civilization, the path has been the same.
- In our society, when a guy who flips a basketball through a ten-foot high hoop can make as much money in 3 hours as a schoolteacher, who is shaping the lives of the next generation, does in a year, something is horribly wrong with our values.
Twenty-plus thoughts & figures & quotes from the first 100 pgs of Wess Stafford's (president of Compassion International) book, Too Small to Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most.
