Humbled

Today I have been in a bit of a funk.  A disagreement today threw me off enough that my heart has been hard.  I so quickly am consumed by my own little world and what to me seems like a huge deal.  And then, I come home tonight and happen to catch a documentary on PBS about a cruise ship in China.  Typically anything about China interests me but this was actually about an area that I have been able to visit.  Click here to watch the promo video.

Up the Yangtze is about a dam that is being built in China.  It is displacing many people and the film captures the reactions and realities of life in response.  One 16 year old girl, from a poor family, is sent to work on this cruise ship to help her parents financially. They are poor peasants who live in a little shack along the river.  Soon the water will rise due to the dam and their home will be washed away.  Her dad is so frail and thin.  

One of the most touching scenes is of a woman who lives in an old abandoned house that will soon be torn down by the government.  They show her kneeling and praying before a cross that she has hung on the wall.  

I sat at home on my couch and sobbed.  I cried for the people in the film.  And I cried because of my selfishness.