$90 billion was pledged by 40 billionaires who are following in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett by giving away at least 50% of their fortune to charity. $90 billion. When I checked Fox, CNN, and MSNBC a couple of minutes ago, with the hundreds of headlines on their front pages, only MSNBC had anything about it, and to their credit it was front and center. Shouldn’t we be shouting this from the rooftops? This may mean the end of malaria, polio, AIDS; improved education around the world; and other problems that kill millions of men, women and children around the world. As much as much of the Christian world decries a world in the last days mired in sin we should exult over modern miracles such as this.

Please take a few moments and read some of the letters written by these men and women who have made this choice. They are infinitely more wealthy than you or I, but do you have any idea where you fit in the world’s wealthy? Look at my little yellow box to the right. I make $33,533/year as a 5th year school teacher. My wife makes $32,500/year as a home health nurse, for a combined total income of $66033/year. That means my wife and I, living in our little Kearns home, are above the 1st percentile, the 0.88% percentile to be accurate, of the wealthy in the world. Then think about that multiplied over centuries and millenia of poverty, sickness, and servitude through Earth’s history and it is hard not to tremble when you realize you have far more in common with the Warren Buffetts of the world than with the poor of the world.

At the bottom of the Global Rich List was the following statement:

$2400 could buy you a second generation High Definition TV OR schooling for an entire generation of school children in an Angolan village.

Tears ran down my face as I read that on my $1700 laptop with my $700 phone nearby. Is my laptop, my phone, worth more than schooling an entire generation of school children?

Well, let’s stick to the happy news. 40 men and women who have nothing but a sense of fairness, justice, and charity and the nudging of Bill and Warren decided to change the world today. And that, my friends, is reason enough for tears: tears of joy.