I watched part of the Live 8 shows last weekend. Nice, people giving of their talent so freely to help end poverty. I wondered what the net worth of the performers must be. Billions, I bet.

A bunch of extremely rich people, taking an hour or so out of a day, begging governments to notice poor people.

It seemed everyone on TV was admiring those performers as if they were giving their own fortunes, as if they were actually buying food or building houses.

I wondered, if those “artists” were to pool just a fraction of their money, how much soup could they buy? How many small houses could they build?

They could pick a group of villages, maybe more, and eradicate poverty in that area. They have the means.

 

Harry Chapin had two big hits in the 70’s, Taxi Driver and Cats in the Cradle. He could have been a very rich man. He could have given an hour or so of his time every few months and thought himself charitable, giving back to the world.

 

But-

 

He died in a car wreck, in 1981, on his way to give a free concert.

He was driving a 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit.

Because he gave away almost everything he owned to charities involved in feeding the hungry.

 

Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

 

His heart was in feeding the hungry, in helping them become able to feed themselves.

He dedicated his life to preventing hunger by giving hundreds of free concerts and freely giving his time and his name. That was his treasure. Money was just the means.

To feed the hungry.

He knew he could always make more money.

 

Matthew 19:21-22: "Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions."

 

Harry Chapin wasn’t perfect. But next time we hear some TV person say how great a singer is for giving an hour of their time, and very little of their millions, to some charity, lets remember him.

 

--Mike Fulford

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you.” He later corrected, “… not with a shovel, your own working class will bury you.”

He thought freedom unsustainable. He believed in the communist manifesto, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (well, sort of … as long as he decided the from and the to…). He thought communism would indeed bury us.

During the cold war, freedom was a real thing, to be kept and protected from a real enemy in a real fight.

We won.

And 30 years later, Mr. Reagan’s call trumpeted the triumph of freedom:

 “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Freedom never seemed so safe, in such good strong hands.

But less than 20 years later:

“Government of New Groton, take from the private citizen according to the needs of the state! Government of New Groton, give to the corporation according to their wealth and power!”

We weren’t buried by our working class. We are being buried by our thinking class. Our judges, our college professors, to whom all is abstract.

Ecclesiastes 1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

 

Well, this…

 

"...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln

 

It has perished from New Groton.

 

Mike Fulford