Putting it all in perspective!

Like the rest of you, I have been watching the goings on in Haiti. Nothing can be sadder that to see a country already considered as one of the poorest in the world, destroyed by a devestating Earthquake.

This morning I heard, (can't remember the source) that it will likely take 10 billion dollars to rebuild Haiti. My questions is what will it look like? Will 10 billion dollars restore it to what it looked like before the Earthquake, or will 10 billion dollars give the people of Haiti a safe place to live with running water and sewage treatment????

I was thinking about how much the Vancouver Olympics is going to cost. Last I heard it was somewhere in the 350 billion dollar range. It's really hard to get your head around these numbers! Can we really rebuild Haiti for 10 billion dollars? That would mean that for just a little less than 3% of the estimated cost of the Vancouver Olympics, we could rebuild the country of Haiti?? If we can, what does this really say about our Stewardship of dollars. How can we justify spending 350 billion dollars on an event which is in many people's minds, exclusive. Only a very small minority of the world's population will be competing at the Vancouver Olympics. This also doesn't take into consideration the minority of Canadians who can actually attend the Olympics. A vast majority of Canadians don't have the monetary ability to pay for tickets, let alone the transporation, food and accomodation prices, all inflated just in time for the event. I'm just wondering what the per athelete cost to provide the venues for these atheletes would be?? I guess you might simply divide the number of atheletes registered to compete at the Olympics and divide it into the approximate cost of 350 billion dollars, and I guess I would have my answer. Probably any way you look at it, in retrospect, the answer is probably not something that we really want to ponder.

Doesn't it make your wonder about the stewardship priorities for the future of our world and future societies?

How far would 350 billion dollars go toward helping our third world brothers and sisters to experience the kind of lifestyle that we take for granted here in Canada? How many billion dollars would it take to eliminate poverty in Canada??

It's not all that much fun to try and put things into perspective!