There's an opportunity right now, and I fear I will let the opportunity completely pass it by.

2 billion people in the world live on less than $2 per day. 1.8 million children die each year because they don't have clean drinking water.

And I sit at a fancy dinner with my friends, polishing off the second bottle of wine, lamenting the fact that my 401k has lost 25% of it's worth this year. I fret because I might have to put off purchasing a new suit or a cinema display.

I'm inconvenienced by the economic downturn, while millions of people around the world are getting destroyed.

Argentina went through a period of hyperinflation not too long ago that took out 80% of the country's wealth and virtually wiped out the middle class. When my wife and I were there this past March we saw the lingering effects - thousands of families bringing large white bins into town on trains, picking up cardboard that's been left on the streets to sell for tiny amounts of money. People that used to have jobs, that worked hard, had their entire lives torn apart by an economic tsunami.

We would spend hours over dinner talking about how crazy it was that these people would have to bring themselves down to that level in order to survive, while their neighbors (ex-coworkers? ex-friends?) would walk right by them with their fancy clothes to the club. Ignoring them entirely. Thinking to themselves "well, that's how life works. Glad it's not me."

We couldn't understand it - it wasn't like watching a kid in Africa on some DVD. It wasn't far away - it was right in front of them. And they ignored it.

We were disgusted. And then we ordered another bottle of wine and talked about how great our $20 steak was.

There's an opportunity in all of this. I'm fairly certain that we're heading towards a major economic disaster - that the worst is yet to come. I think that picture of Buenos Aires isn't too far from what our world could be like in the next 10 years.

And assuming I survive it without joining the ranks of those devastated, I have a choice. I can cling ever tighter to my money, and sit in my house thinking smugly about how I was just more talented or luckier than those fools outside...

Or I can soften my heart. I can remember that more than just about anything else, my God's heart was for the poor, the broken, the disenfranchised.

The church has a long, rich history of coming to its senses during times of crisis, but I'm concerned that we are no longer a people who know our history, who know about our God's heart for "the least of these", who really believe that the purpose of all the wealth they've amassed over the last 40 years was their own consumption.

I'm praying that a nation of Christians who for decades have become drunk on excess finally see the incredible disparity between them and their neighbors (which for the first time in history includes people from the other side of the world). I'm praying they wake up and see that the three cars and the McMansions and the spas and the Prada bags have done nothing but blind them to the incredible pain in the world.

I'm praying that we figure out that one of the reasons this generation is so disenfranchised with the church is that it seems more concerned with building a bigger sanctuary or electing a President that won't raise their taxes than it is practicing the same spirit of radical love that the God they follow appears to deem so important.

The upheaval of the last few months can be that catalyst. It has the potential to be a wakeup call. And we can either complain about how our nest egg has shrunk, or we can confront the reality that all around us people who previously had very little now have nothing.

It's an opportunity I pray that I take advantage of, that my church takes advantage of.