Every day, 16,000 children die from starvation around the world. That means 16,000 died yesterday, 16,000 will die today, and another 16,000 tomorrow. By contrast, we live in a place where we throw away enough food to end child starvation. Statistically, if we took all the money we spend on dog food alone, we could stop world hunger. Can you imagine that?

When we think in those terms, it’s especially shocking that child slavery still exists only 700 miles off the coast of Florida. We see a dramatic need to fill that gap and say, in very practical terms, “This is not right!” We feel a need to end it, and that desire is not wrong.

And yet, we believe that God has not called us to fix Haiti. There’s no fixing Haiti. Suffering is an inescapable part of life on earth, and denying that would be foolish. Jesus Himself said “the poor you will have with you always.” But despite that reality, we take up the responsibility of acting generously and compassionately toward the needy—just like Christ did with us.

Our goal for our kids in our Children’s Homes is that they would grow up feeling safe and being able to trust. We give them education. We want them to have a trade, so that when they get married, they have a way to support and raise a family. And for that one child, slavery is broken. We can’t fix 300,000 children, but we can help one, or ten, or now more than 120 children, as God gives us capacity and opportunity. We pray that these small-scale acts of faithfulness to the gospel model would bear even greater fruit as God does what only He can.

So when it comes to the question of “How should we respond to poverty?,” the answer is not to fall into discouragement or to think unrealistically about solving global suffering. A right response looks more like radical faithfulness in the opportunities in front of us, combined with prayer that God would use His church as a beacon of hope to those who need it most.