Brother, Could You Spare A Cow

Dan West was serving as relief worker during the Spanish Civil War. His job was divvy up the rations of powdered milk to hungry families. Each day he was forced to decide who would receive the limited rations and who wouldn't – literally, who would live and who would die. The same starving children came everyday asking for help and there would never be enough to go around. This kind of aid, he knew, would never be enough. Then a simple idea hit him; Give them a cow not a cup.

So when he returned home he started by sending seventeen cows to malnourished children in Puerto Rico. The idea was to end hunger permanently by providing families with livestock and training so that they "could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children.”  Each family would be given cow with only one catch. When each animal gave birth, the first newborn cow had to go to another family. The gift had to continue. So an idea grew. An idea that is now estimated by the organization he founded, Heifer International, to have fed over 8.5 million people in 125 countries. A gift that could be passed on by everyone that received it.

Look at our world today and you will see people starving. They’re not starving for milk or meat but bread.  Bread not made by human hands but the bread of life. People starving for meaning in their lives, purpose, direction. They have been trying to fill the hunger with worldly substitutes. It never is quite enough to satisfy. Soon, they will come back searching for more. It’s not enough, it will never be enough.

So God in his wisdom gave man a gift, the sacrifice of his Son. To give man what he needed to overcome the misery in his life.  A gift that never will run out (John 4:10). A gift that can fundamental change the lives every starving person. It also comes with one catch.  You have to pass it on.

Every one of us can look around in our world and see people in need. In need of help, in need hope, in need of love. We may be able, in the short term, to give them a cup, but they need something more. They need ‘that which will last’. They need the Gospel of Jesus. An idea that can change their lives in numerous ways. It gives us meaning to life. It gives us direction. It gives us hope.

Paul wrote in Romans 1:16  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Dan West had an idea so powerful it could feed the world; Jesus had a message even more powerful.

It could save the world.