Chocolate Room or Dirt Cookies

Chocolate Room or Dirt Cookies

Welcome to Christianity Oasis. This is Chocolate Room or Dirt Cookies from our Sojourn With Luz Leigh Collection. We hope you enjoy this enlightening reading and it helps you on your own be-YOU-tiful Christian walk.

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Sojourn With Luz Leigh

Chocolate Room or Dirt Cookies

Written by Luz Leigh - 30 January 2008

When I read the headlines in the newspaper today, I could hardly believe my eyes. There on the same page, almost side by side were two most unusual items. "Rising food costs force Haiti's poor to resort to eating dirt" and "A real 'sweet' room---made of chocolate---is unveiled for Valentine's Day stunt." The dateline on the article about the poor eating dirt was Port-au-Prince, Haiti while the chocolate room was, of course, from New York City.

After reading these articles, I sat thinking "How can our world be so screwed up that people eat dirt to survive while we in America can lick chocolate from a room made entirely of chocolate?" I am not advocating the communist way of life ... take from the rich to give to the poor, but surely here in America we could find some better way to use our resources than to build a CHOCOLATE ROOM. Get real. I love chocolate as well, if not better than, the next person, but even I can see the waste of money that could be used to help feed the hungry, clothe those who are without warm clothing, find shelter for the homeless, or any number of other humanitarian things.

Some of the poorer Haitian people rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. By adding a little salt and vegetable shortening the dirt is transformed into an edible "cookie." The article quoted a sixteen-year-old girl, mother of a month-old-son, as saying that when her mother doesn't cook anything, "I have to eat them three times a day." Although she likes the taste of the cookies, sometimes they give her stomach pains and make her baby colicky when she nurses him. She lives in a two-room house with her parents, who are unemployed, and her five siblings.

When we sit down to eat our meal today, let us thank our Father for his bountiful gifts to us, even if it is not as fancy as the chocolate room. It is edible food which brings nourishment to our bodies.

You know something? The next time I tear into my favorite candy bar, I will be wondering ... hmmm was this a portion of the chocolate room wall ... did someone really lick on it before the room was dismantled?

With that, I shall retire to the kitchen to see if there are any non-chocolate goodies for me.

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