Month of Thanks: Day 1

Idea shamelessly stolen from John Scalzi.

Last night we had a presentation from a girl who went to Swaziland, where AIDS has so decimated the country they expect the entire country to not exist soon. They have no economy to speak of, live in abject poverty, and have no hope for the future.

Swaziland has the highest HIV infection rate in the world (26% of all adults; more in other reports) and also the lowest life expectancy at 32 years, which is 6 years lower than the next lowest average of Angola.

I am thankful for hope. Thankful that I live in a country that has a decent, if not quite as good as it has been lately, economy. I have a job and if, God forbid, something should happen to it, I don’t doubt that I can get another job of some sort. I don’t have to live in a dirt and grass house with no electricity, running water, or sanitation, eating whatever I happen to be able to scratch out of the ground. Billions of people in this world right now live with nothing and no hope of a better future.

Despite the current protests to the contrary, there is hope for the future in America. So much hope that we can’t even begin fathom what being poor is really like. We can’t begin to fathom what a real health care crisis, like an entire generation dying of AIDS, is really like.

Thank you, Lord.