[caption id="attachment_1151" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="----Young Haitian men, carrying water to those in need----"][/caption]

When moments of disaster strike close by, near in geography or near to our hearts, it’s fashionable to give and talk about how much we should be doing for the people affected by the disaster. It’s hard to find reasons not to give our time, money and effort towards our hurting human family just a short distance away.

We feel good about ourselves when we retweet something, share a post on facebook, publicly question why our governments or big companies aren’t doing more. We tell ourselves that Haiti needs more advocates like us on their side. We might even silently compare ourselves to others who aren’t doing as much as we are to advocate aid for the tragedy. But the main reason we all aren’t giving more, is that we simply don’t have more to give.

According to Barna Research, the average American gives a shade over 1% of their income away. According to this article on MSN, 43% of Americans are spending more than they make each year.

But what if you knew the earthquake was going to strike Haiti. What …

[caption id="attachment_1117" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="----Just a small glimpse at the total devastation of Port au Prince, Haiti----"][/caption]

Back in 2005, Haiti gave the US $50,000 dollars in support of Katrina victims. That is almost DOUBLE (as a percentage of total GDP) what the US is giving to Haiti to help with the earthquake. Not to mention the loss of human life in Haiti will be 25-50 times that of Katrina.

But doesn’t the US’s $100 million sound a lot more generous than Haiti’s little $50,000.

Yup.

But not to everyone…

I’m reminded of a story about Jesus. One day he decided to carefully watch who was putting what into the “donation coffers” of his day. He sat quietly while the big, important, high income people made a pompous showing of their gifts, being careful to let everyone know just how much they were giving.

Then came this little widow, perhaps embarrassed to drop in her two small coins. This was too much for Jesus. His exuberance bubbled over into a little speech.
“This poor widow has put in more than everyone else! …

Corrected my last post.  My friend Adi sent me the following email:
Matt Hi,
I saw the blog and it was great. The “15 second dilemma” is a scary thought, the ultimate “no win” situation.
The reason I am writing is to point out that we are not “the” Hatzalah Organization; there is no “the” Hatzalah organization. There are many such organizations and projects all over the world. We are one of them. We are the “Hatzalah Project”, which belongs to the “Israel Emergency Aid Fund”.

We provide emergency equipment to all first responders such as doctors, firefighter, paramedics and Magen David Adom first responders (women included), all over Israel. and that is the reason the response time stands on 72 …

Maybe the people of North Dakota have figured out the circles.  At the end of the fiscal year they will have a $700 million surplus (see the full story here).

In a bad economy.

Like North Dakota you must figure out how to manage three circles. What are the circles?

Despite the seemingly endless things you could do with your money, there are really only three choices:

Consumption
Contributing to Others
Contributing to the Future.

That’s it.

You must decide how much money you are going to consume, use up, burn. Each of us has to live, and to do so requires consumption. You must also decide how much to contribute to others. How much of what is yours will you send to help those in need around you. Finally you must decide how much to contribute to the future. In today’s economy, many people are wishing they would have paid more attention to this last, critical category.

The sizes of the circles vary from person to person and you don’t get to tell someone else how to manage their circles.

How are you managing your three circles? How much goes into each one? No one will move from consumer to contributor without having an understanding of their personal …