privileged people

as I have been looking through pictures and preparing what I want to share with others about my experience in Honduras - I really see how much my time there changed my life. I veiw the world so differently, now having experienced life outside the US. Going to Korea only enhanced my ever expanding world view - that there are so many people who have grown up with different customs and different opportunities...
I am so thankful to have the opportunities I have coming from the US - that I am able to travel the world and see new places.. that I am able to go to school and learn whatever I want to learn..
these opportunities are such a privilege - but something that I take for granted all the time...

In my ethics healthcare class - we are discussing Justice - and by making a legitimate claim invokes a right for myself - implying that someone else has a duty to help me have this right. So what is a legit claim? John Rawls says that each person is owed a fair opportunity to access healthcare; involving both an equal chance and the means to take the opportunity -- that persons are owed a decent minimum of health care. So what would the decent minimum be? the right to life?... what level of care is something that we would say everyone has a right to receive regardless of stature, money, or circumstances? This is an issue within the US, as we consider those who have health insurance and those who do not, those who are very sick but illegally in the county... I hear a lot about what people think is their RIGHT...

And then I can not help but think about those that I love from Honduras - and what is their decent minimum? what is their right? those who often do not get any more than a 6th grade education, many clothes, any job opportunities, much less quality healthcare - if any.. In Ghana, 1 in 4 children are sold from their families and work as child laborers - working 14 hours a day, eating one meal a day, getting beaten and asked to do physically demanding jobs beyond their abilities.. what is the decent minimum for these children?

I struggle because sometimes I think - how arrogant are we (Americans) who think we should go around the world the help people - what do we have to offer? they are smart and beautiful... full of faith like I have never seen, ready to practice hospitality and respect...

and I go back to ethics class... the idea of justice - and duty - and if all people have the right to life. or to education. or to health care. or to freedom - all of these things I have.. so then what is my duty?

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grave gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word. 2 Thess. 2:16-17