Want versus Need
By Lori, January 25, 2008
In America, I might need a new washing machine. I could need
a new outfit. I could need food or shelter or even pen and paper. I might need
to go to church. I might need to go to confession. I might need to tell someone
how much they mean to me. I need my coffee. The list is endless.
If that is need, then what is want?
I want to go shopping. I want my way. I want to hear my
mother’s voice. I want a good meal with a glass of wine and a delicious,
decadent dessert to follow.
I want a healthy baby. I want a decent place to live. I want
good things for my children. I want to be in a good church. The list is
endless.
Here in India, need is evident. Who cares about a washing
machine? I can wash my clothes by hand and I do. A new outfit? They are cheap.
$8.00 or less American for about anything and it is beautiful. Food is on every
street corner. Shelter? The corner will do. Many live on the streets and beg
there as well.
Seeing the devastating poverty everywhere makes the lifestyle
of even the poorest American look opulent.
Our group was taken shopping the other day. The horror of
poverty against the insanity of materialism was overwhelming. We haggled over the price of the rickshaw,
which wound up being 75 cents. We plunged headlong into a sea of mass confusion
of cars, rickshaws, motorbikes and people with no sense of order and no stop
and go signals to get to our destination.
Once there, we walked the broken semblance of a long  ago
made street with a sometimes occasional sidewalk. The blast of cool
air-conditioning in the modern storefronts called to me. Inside were all the
things that money can be spent on: new leather purses, clothing, classic suits,
tailor made clothing, luggage and shoes. Anything that man could want.
I held my children close and to the inside because the
outside of the street held the reality of life here. Beggars of every kind:
leprosied hands, arms and legs missing, hands with missing fingers reaching for
whatever a beggar could get. 
The midget with no legs or arms and the severely deformed
stomach was the worst. He was propped on a small board and was obviously a
middle aged man. How could he have lived so long? Who had held him when he was
born? What did God intend for his life?
God could will a perfect world with perfect people in it.
There we could all become clones who could say the right thing, do the right
thing and be the right thing. God instead chose to allow his creations a free
will. Within that free will we have the
choice to rise above circumstances. We can choose to serve and love the
unlovable. We can become a reflection of the beauty of God or we can ignore all
of the pain and suffering that surround even our perfect little world and go
shopping and get that coffee.
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