I’m reading this book. It’s wrecking me. It’s forcing me to wrestle with God, my selfishness, and the blessings I have in my life that I take for granted.

Being born in America is blessing #1.

“Hole in Our Gospel,” is written by Richard Stearns, president of World Vision. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. Big issues. Big responsibilities.

I want you to imagine a scenario with me.

Let’s say you wake-up tomorrow morning with no running water. You can’t take a shower. Go to the bathroom. Or even have a glass of water to hydrate yourself. And running over to a friend’s house isn’t an option — they don’t have running water either.

Instead of preparing for work (so you can bring home money to care for your family), or sending your kids off to school (so they can receive an education, get good grades to get a good job, to then provide for their family), all of your family’s thoughts and energy is poured into finding water.

Where’s the water? If you live where Erick and I do, it’s about a 20-minute walk down the road, in a lake.

You grab a five-gallon bucket — which weighs about 42 pounds when filled with water — travel the 45-minute journey, only to bring back about three gallons of water. You started with five, but it sloshed out on your way back home. Sucky, right?

The average family of four in America uses 255 gallons of water each day. To keep your water usage at that level, you’d have to take 85, 45-minute trips to the lake. Which isn’t possible. Even if you gathered water non-stop, you’d need 63 hours to accomplish this task. Daunting? I think so.

And here’s the final kicker — the water you just spent all your time and energy collecting, is tainted with life-threatening bacteria. And now you’re feeling hopeless.

Reality check. This is the no-win situation facing families daily all around the world. As many as five million people die every year of water-related illnesses.

Parents are either watching helplessly as their children die of lack of water, or they watch them die from diarrhea, because the only water they have is tainted.

If we had a lack of clean water in America, we’d plug all of our nation’s resources into solving the issue as quickly as possible.

We function with the belief that as long as we’ve eliminated the issue in our country, we don’t need to eradicate the lack of clean water around the world. It’s unacceptable.

This book isn’t about poverty, hunger, or little to no sources of clean water — you’ve heard that all before. This book is about injustice.

Read it. I’m sure you could use a little humble pie.