On Sunday, Princess 1.0 joined roughly 100 other girls in grades 4-6 to try out for travel basketball in our local high school. “The Boy” and I sat in the gym to encourage my little girl and observe the tryouts. I was surprised to see how many of the 100+ little girls in the gym were wearing the popular Nike “Elite” socks. These are the socks that Nike made popular a year or so ago (they have the dashes and dots along the back). It amazes me that a sock can be a fashion statement. You see them everywhere. As if the $150 pair of shoes aren’t hard enough to keep up with. Now we have $15 socks to add to the “want” list.

I received my 3rd assignment yesterday for Compassion Bloggers Month. This weeks assignment was to observe a picture and write a post with what comes to mind. When I looked at this picture of these little shoes, I thought back to that gym on Sunday. I thought about how we often replace our running shoes when they reach 400 miles because they are “broken down.” I thought about how much our society judges a person based on their shoes. Then I looked again at this picture and it brought a reality check. It brought a reminder that it’s so hard to understand the needs around the world when I’m so comfortable in mine.

Rob Bell once wrote:

They gather, they sing, they hear a talk from the pastor, and then they get back in the car with their parents and they go home; the garage door opens up, the car goes in, and the garage door goes down.

Ouch.

Please don’t read this and think that I’m telling you what to buy your kids or how to spend your money. That’s none of my business. I just know that when I look at these shoes and I read that statement from Rob Bell, I wonder if I am doing my part to educate my children in just how blessed we are. This is one of the reasons I am honored to partner with Compassion Bloggers. We’re just doing our part to spread the message, see children sponsored and lives changed.

To find out more about sponsoring a child through Compassion, please visit their website (HERE).

Let’s change the score.