How big is your heart?

I was recently in Mozambique, Africa to participate in an annual managers meeting for our largest grant. One evening I was spending time with some colleagues from Kenya and Uganda. The colleague from Uganda was telling me a story about her life that challenged me personally.

In case you aren't aware, it is typical in Africa to have a small home. The one below is from Lesotho, but it gives you an idea of what I am referring to. Large families live in homes this size. That means that siblings share a room and often the same bed.

My colleague grew up in similar conditions in rural Uganda. Now she is in her 30's, still single and making a good income working for us. She has her own home, larger than the one she grew up in. When she returns to her family home she is still expected to sleep with her younger sisters living at home. She recently told her mom that she didn't want to stay at home any more on her visits because she doesn't like sharing a bed. Her mom replied, "your heart has shrunk. when your heart is big it shouldn't matter what size the home is because it is full of love."

Though I fully understand not wanting to share a bed with younger sisters at 30 years old, I was challenged by her mothers position. In my experience, the developing world has small homes and huge hearts. Americans, however, have huge homes and smaller hearts. As Americans, we give when convenient rather than sacrifically. We do enough to appease our conscience, though often not giving to the full measure that the task may require. We care deeply about the size of our bank accounts and use the size of our homes as a status symbol, but we often don't care about those suffering in our own community.

I was challenged by this mothers reply and had to ask myself, how big is my heart? I discovered my heart has some growing to do. I encourage you to ask yourself, how big is your heart?