A Cup of Rice
I made a great dinner last night. Lovely grilled ocean trout with wilted greens and a lime soy dressing served on a bed of rice. Masterchef eat your heart out. (Even my three year old scraped her plate clean!) After enjoying our meal, my hubby and I put the kids to bed and cleaned up. As usual I just tossed out the leftover rice because there wasn’t enough for another meal, and in all honesty I couldn’t be bothered coming up with something creative to do with the amount left. I thought nothing of it and started opening the mail. The first letter was from Compassion, and it just about smacked me across the face.
It should have been a feel-good letter. It was thanking us for a recent donation to assist with the current global food crisis. But I didn’t feel good. I felt guilty. The letter opened with a quote from a mother in Nicaragua who said, “Many blessings have come in moments when we most needed it, like someone showing up with rice…” Yep, rice. And I had just chucked our leftover rice out because I was lazy.
Right at that moment the world seemed horribly wrong to me. How is it that one mother considers a cup of rice an answer to prayer, while another tosses it into the rubbish? How is it that one family earns so little that they can’t feed their children a single simple meal, while another earns so much that they eat five times a day, every day?
Making the donation didn’t impact me, but the stark contrast between the way two mothers view rice did. I was glad that I felt bad, if you know what I mean. That unsettled, uncomfortable feeling is what makes us take action. God trusted us with this world and I don’t know that we’ve done such a good job with it.
I’m certain that the next time I cook rice for my family I’ll be thinking about that mum in Nicaragua. I’ll talk to my daughter about the child we sponsor through Compassion, and about the way we can change the world one child at a time. And when we say grace, we’ll pray for the kids with no rice and with empty tummies. Maybe if we show our kids what’s wrong with the world, they’ll do a better job than we have of making things right.
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Do you sponsor a child? If not, check out Compassion or World Vision and change the world for one child
I realise you are going for something deeper here, but cooked rice freezes really well and is handy to pull out when you have hungry mouths that can’t wait to be fed.
@Gayle LOL! Thanks for lightening the mood! Actually, when bub is a little bigger I’ll freeze the leftover rice in ice cube trays. A touch of water sets them into “rice cubes” perfect for bulking out baby meals.
So true. Putting our lives into perspective makes us so thankful for what we have.
I know what you mean. Sometimes you think you’re having a bad day, and something like that just puts it all in perspective. By the way, I’m also big on either freezing the rice, or make a small friend rice with it. The kids love it. The fish sounded delicious – I will have to try that. Do you think it would work with snapper?
Ok, no more throwing out rice for me. I’ll either freeze it or save it for a snack sized fried rice.
@MrsDesperate – I think any fish works for this, but boneless is best for kids. Really, I’m no masterchef at all! This is a super cinchy dish
So true ‘Mrs Desperate’ – many things we worry about are just so trivial and it is easy to get caught up in a “woe is me” thought pattern. It is wonderful to read something like this post to put it all back into perspective.
I have travelled extensively through Asia and was so often shocked and moved by the degree of poverty some endure. I would always come back vowing to “change the world” and then my own “normal life” would bog me down. I am conscious of waste, though not as conscious as I would like to be. Thanks for the reminder.
Great post and lesson for us all.
We sponsor a Compassion child called Fiona in Uganda.
@JanMary We sponsor a Compassion child called Novia in East Indonesia. One person can’t change the world, but you can change the world for one person
I love Compassion and have sponsored children through them since I was in graduate school…got my husband started sponsoring before we got married, so we’ve had two Compassion kids for quite a while now.
I’ve been learning a lot about saving things up and trying not to waste things. Our budget has been tighter than it’s ever been for about a year now. One of my favorite things now is to use my rubber scraper to clean out the peanut butter jar – I can get another two slices of bread covered sometimes when it is at the point I would have rinsed it out to recycle in the past. I made a yummy soup the other day from two different leftovers combined with some canned soup and it made 3 more lunches for myself and hubby. We have so much that we forget to enjoy it completely rather than tossing it when we are tired of it. Thanks for the wake up call!
I just popped over from Scary Mommy’s blog and this was so eye opening to me. And definitely guilt inducing! Thank you for sharing!
Cath,
As a Compassion Australia staff, I’m encouraged that the answered prayer of a mother from Nicaragua has made such a profound impact on your stewardship & on the way you’ll educate your children! They are blessed
To all you precious readers who’re wanting to reach out to impoverished children (& mothers – yes Compassion reaches out to pregnant mothers & infants up to 3 years old too) living in poverty – you can do that right now @ http://www.compassion.com.au.
Through child sponsorships, you offer children an opportunity to grow OUT of the poverty they were born into, and empower them to become fulfilled Christian adult living the dreams God planted in his / her hearts.
@JanMary & Cath I sponsor a Compassion child called Sam in Ghana. My girlfriend (soon to be fiance) also sponsors a little girl through Compassion.
Times have been incredibly tough for me in the past year (I got injured and then lost my job because of it) but I’ve known that my pain is only for a season and God will bring me through. Despite the bills mounting (at one point 6 weeks behind in rent & 2 months behind on phone etc) it has always been a top priority to have money there for my sponsor child. Sponsoring a child through Compassion is very rewarding and I encourage all readers to sponsor a child.
A friend just had the opportunity to visit his sponsor child in Uganda late last year and it has changed his life perspective forever.
Also, I’m pleased to report that God has done miraculous things in my life, I’m now caught up with bills and I’ve managed to pay off a $1650 engagement ring (ticket price $3300 – the ‘recession’ has its benefits too
. We live in Gods economy on Gods terms, not the worlds economy.
Sponsor a child today!
God bless.
I found this post from Compassion Australia’s facebook status. Thank you. My husband and I have two compassion sponsor kids – one in the Philippines and one in Bangladesh. I usually end up in tears reading the articles in the quarterly newsletters. I’m always disappointed with how quickly I forget the impact the stories have on me though. It’s always good to be reminded of how much different things are for us. Thanks for this post – a great reminder. I’ve linked back to it from my blog too.
Your title, “A Cup of Rice” hit home here.
About two months ago, my 6 year old daughter was complaining that she didn’t “like” what I had made for dinner. She followed up that comment with a disgusted look on her face. I don’t know what got into me, but I responded, “That’s alright. You can go to bed and tomorrow you may have a cup of rice.” She thought I meant for breakfast. I informed her that, no I meant only once during the day. Her eyes became HUGE and she realized where I was going with this…we sponsor 4 children with Compassion and she is very involved in letter writing, praying for them, etc.
I think it is so easy to forget how blessed we are…we live in a society where *more* is never enough.
(By the way, I came here from blog.compassion.com)
I appreciated what you wrote here as I’ve been thinking lately about how I feed my family. I’ve been sitting down to do some meal planning, trying to make a 5 week menu to simplify our shopping and that’s brought questions to my mind.
We generally eat pretty healthily and I cook almost 100% of the time from scratch, but I’ve been struggling with how it seems we think we deserve such “rich” meals. Do we really need to top our chili with cheese or have meat every day?
I’ve come to the conclusion that it is fine to enjoy our food as God has graciously created so many wonderful flavors. However, I’ve also concluded that every day doesn’t need to be filled with all the extras. I’ve certainly been cooking simply already, but have just been taking a step back to reevaluate. We’ve lived in Africa and ate similarly to our neighbors while there, although we had meat more often than they.
Now that we’re back in N. America, we no longer see poverty on a daily basis. For myself, I am looking to cook a simple meal of beans & rice or rice & a vegetarian sauce for at least one or two of our main meals each week. The hope is that, although it isn’t exactly “fasting”, God will use those meals as:
-a reminder to my family about how much we
have to be thankful for
-a reminder to be in prayer for our Compassion child and other children & families we know from our years in Africa
Just a way to hopefully stop the “out of sight, out of mind” process we feel we’ve gone through since our return to N. America.
PS A small portion of leftover rice makes a great hot cereal for breakfast warmed up with a little milk & sugar & cinnamon, if you like.
A great reminder. I, too, have been guilty of feeding the last of the rice to the dog or putting it in the compost.
We sponsor a little girl in Ghana through Compassion. Having her picture on the fridge and praying for her to have enough to eat daily has already changed how we view things.
A great concern for the one who do not have.
God bless. I appreciate.
By the way Rice is our staple food in India.
Very sorry to read a recent post about people wasting food in US.
I remember crying once as a child because my mum said I could throw out the food I couldn’t finish eating. I felt so terrible wasting.
These days, seems I feel better about throwing out some food, because it means I didn’t eat it all (keeping in mind my waistline).
While it still sounds funny to cry because I didn’t want to throw out food, I wish I still hated wasting like I did as a child.
@Britt: I like that idea. My mum was raised to eat it cold for breakfast the next day. I keep thinking about how picky some of the kids I’ve watched are and wonder how it would be different if what was on there plate was the only food the family had.
hahaha your times freaked me out–I saw that my comment was 1 FEb and I thought I had my days confused!! glad to see it’s just different time zones
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