Angelina - It's been five years

Angelina - It's been five years.

    Woke up at o'dark hundred; Jane sacrificed and got up too. Riding to the airport, our eyes and contacts still calibrating clarity, as we prepared to leave our normal world for a place where the daily grind is much more severe.
    Angelina - I've walked her dirt streets before, Gringos going door to door to share and pray, finding weary souls, hungry bellies and stories of brokenness.
I've never gone to bed without today and tomorrow's meal; never been sick without medical care close at hand; never gone without clean drinking water or indoor plumbing; never been cared for by grandparents, because no one knew my Daddy, and Mom worked the streets in Santo Domingo (when she wasn't high).
    Oh, I've felt our collective pain at the gas pump and moaned about inflation, but scraping for a $.50 bowl of rice and wondering how our family will make it, when the same bowl is now a $1.00, is beyond alien to this overweight, achy knee preacher.
    My life has dripped with plenty in a culture weighed down and intoxicated by affluenza. Like living and breathing in a moldy house, I have breathed in modern, western Christendom and interpreted much of my world and God's through its distorted lenses. Angelina helps me see more clearly, our universal brokenness and the deep, spiritual poverty amidst our plenty.
    Last month I rode in a Porsche, played golf at a prestigious country club, ate in a four star restaurant, slept in an 18th Century plantation, preached to comfortable people and played on my iPad.
   Today I'll land in the Dominican Republic and be grateful for AC, hot water and rice and beans, and tomorrow I'll arise and return to Angelina.