Beans and Rice Week

This week Crossroads church has been doing a series called ROI or Return on Investment. We’ve learned a lot of statistics to really show us how blessed we are. How abundant our lives are. We talked about how the richest 1% of the world live. How they open a pantry full of food and ‘don’t have anything to eat,’ how we have shoes for running, dancing, walking, baseball, basketball, swimming, etc. How we give them away before they’re even worn out. We open our closets full of clothes and ‘don’t have anything to wear.’ It was really an eye opener to learn that if you earn at least 34,000 a year that you are among the richest ONE percent in the world. It’s so easy to forget that there are billions of people who have one outfit, one pair of shoes, no running water, no sanitation, no heat, definitely no A/C. And I get upset because I don’t have enough money for Starbucks or a new bigger TV to replace the one I have that already works fine. I needed this message from church, I really did. It is incomprehensible the blessings that I have, the opportunity I have. Sometimes you just need someone to remind you of those things, even though they’re constantly all around me.


So as a closing to this series, as a church we’re all sacrificing our luxury to go to the grocery store and pick out whatever it is we want to eat and replacing it with a sustenance diet. We will be donating the difference in what we would have spent on groceries to bless three different initiatives:

First is an organization called Cincinnati Recreation Foundation Cincinnati Recreation Foundation the money raised for this organization will be used to keep Cincinnati Public Pools open on Sundays when they would normally be closed due to budget cuts.

Second is The Strive Partnership “Recent studies show that preschool is the single biggest factor in a child’s chance of success later in life.” Strive Partnership helps provide quality preschool to more local children

Third is Compassion International, a lot of times people sign up to sponsor a kid, the child gets the good news that they’re being connected with a family who will donate money so they can eat, and then that sponsor doesn’t follow through. We’re donating money to those children as well.

I’ve decided to do this for two weeks. Mostly because I had food in my refrigerator that would spoil and that’s obviously not the point of this exercise, but also because I waste way too much money on food. I go to the grocery every single week and buy whatever it is that I feel like eating that week. I am that person that opens my pantry, opens my fridge and says “I don’t have anything to eat,” to a refrigerator/pantry full of food. So I went to the grocery store and spent $5.57 (instead of about $60,) and will not buy groceries for 2 weeks. Instead I will eat the beans and rice and anything else in my pantry or refrigerator instead of buying more of what I do not need. I’m hoping to keep this practice up from now on. I know it will save a ton of money for me, after my donation at church next week of course.

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