The Wonderful World Beyond Today...
A Return to Eden: When Hunger and Disease Disappear
The plight of the sick, poor and hungry makes us long for the day when a real utopia spreads around the earth!
by Mike Bennett
"The poster children that tug at our heartstrings are all there, wide-eyed and ribbed with pain, their skulls grotesquely out of proportion to their withered bodies," wrote World Food Program executive director James Morris about a drought- and locust-caused famine in Niger in 2005.
"Their skin hangs loose on feeble bones and many feed through tubes taped to their faces. They are gathered to play out their final days on a well-worn set that many may never leave."
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than 840 million people go hungry every day, including one in three people in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, 25,000 people die every day from malnutrition and hunger-related disease—three quarters of them children under 5 (www.just1world.org/food-and-hunger.htm).
Children make up about half of the approximately 50 million refugees in the world. Luise Druke of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that more than 2 million children were killed in conflicts in the 1990s. Another 6 million were wounded and 1 million orphaned.
Millions more children (and adults) are stricken with disease, maimed or disabled each year.
"Your kingdom come"!
Such heartrending stories and statistics make us cry out to God for His Kingdom to come to bring a time when hunger and disease will be halted—even while we do what we can to help today.
The prophet Ezekiel records some of God's fantastic promises for the world beyond today:
"I will raise up for them a garden of renown, and they shall no longer be consumed with hunger" (Ezekiel 34:29).
