putting worry in context

Our team that has traveled to Motipur India to help with the orphanage we are helping to build there is making their way back to the states as I am writing this. We just got a note from one of our lead pastors, Todd Tamura, who is on his first trip to the orphanage and who, as a former fighter pilot with the United States Air Force (insert your favorite F-150 joke here) has seen a lot of the world and has had his share of adventure. He wrote in part:

It's around midnight Wed night/Thurs morning. We just drove 5 hrs from
Motipur. There are no words to describe how dangerous the roads are
around here: thousands of people walking on and along the road, cows,
monkeys, dogs, water buffalo, trucks, buses, cars, bicycles, rickshaws.
They drive on the left side of the road around here, but really noone
owns any lane. My pics will never do justice to the head-on games of
chicken that they play around here.

The Hope Center and the children were absolutely awesome. Over fifty
children who have been rescued from unimaginable circumstances. Now in
school, in a Christian environment, with food to eat and people that
love them. It's amazing what God is doing there. It gives you a sense of
how big our God is and His love for all people. The children have such
joy even though they have so little. The foster parents have 10-15
children each and they are the limiting factor in terms of expanding the
operation. It's a 10 year commitment and huge because of the remoteness
of the location and the austere conditions.

Here at home, we obsess over elections and stock markets and who will win the next football game.

It is a good reminder that in most of the rest of the world, the part of the world where transportation likely means a donkey or moped and the burning question of the day is not where I will eat lunch today but IF I will eat lunch today- that part of the world where (as it is in Motipur) the nearest medical clinic may be 60 miles away and you and your loved ones have no way of getting there- the rest of the world where 18,000 children die every single day of starvation- and where 2.67 billion people have never heard the gospel or own a Bible...

...people in the rest of the world don't have the luxury of worrying about the kinds of things that give us stress.

I have a feeling that when our team comes back, we will notice that something about them has changed- and I am not just talking about their renewed enthusiasm for American cheeseburgers- I have a strong sense that "worry" will have a different context.