I have a quick story for you: I was at the Sundance Film Festival this past year, and my favorite film was titled: Triage, Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma. During the Rwandan Genocide, all the NGO's fled Rwanda, Dr. Orbinski's organization (Doctors without Borders) was the only one to enter the country. Orbinski's job was to number off victims. 1 meant a person needed immediate attention or they would die, 2 meant that they needed to be treated within that day, and 3 meant that they did not have a chance to make it. He decided whether victims would live or die. He also did surgery after surgery on people and the film chronicles him returning to all the countries he worked in as he prepares to write a book about his experiences. In these countries, so many people are still in tough situations, maybe not in war or genocide, but living in huge slums and struggling in extreme poverty. As he walks around the slums remembering what had happened there, people missing limbs hobble up to him and tell him thanks for saving their life. You realize this one man literally healed and saved the lives of thousands of people.

The film then goes on to talk about how he is a now a professor in Toronto, is married and has several kids. Part of me couldn't help wondering how a man could go from saving thousands of lives to just being a teacher, husband and dad. He had been a hero, a life saver and now he was just any old guy on the street. After the film, I tried to speak with him a little but I only got a few words in and my own dilemma had not been answered. What about me? I want to impact the world. I want to change lives. Still, I also want to get married and have kids, but how can I "settle down" when there is so much work to be done?

The story does not end there. At Sundance, there is a shuttle that take everyone around the small ski town. So I am sitting on this shuttle, and then all of a sudden Mr. Orbinski steps on to the shuttle, by himself. Ha! Here's my chance. I take a deep breath, head over there and ask if I can sit down by him. I prepare to ask this man I barely know, who I just saw on the big screen, the question that plagues me: How can I settle down and just be a father and a husband when I could be out there trying to save lives?

"Being a father to my children is the role that only I can play. No one else can be my children's father," he replied. He made it clear that there was other young men that could go out and save the lives, but he was busy saving lives himself, just in a different way.

How much of the injustice of this world is connected to absent fathers and mothers? What would it have been like if the evil dictators of this past century would have had incredibly loving parents? Maybe they did, but I imagine most of them did not. You want to fight extreme poverty and injustice in this world? Well then I say love the crap out of your kids, your family and your friends. "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Cor. 13:3)

I used to believe the second biggest problem in this world was the fact that nearly half the world lives in poverty. I now think the second biggest problem in the world might be the lack of love people around the world often experience from parents, spouses, family and friends.

Go see this movie, it will rock your world. If you're parent and wish you could do more for this world, remember the impact you already are making right around you.

Settling down doesn't have to mean settling for a lesser calling,

dan