Why we must adopt Haiti's orphans into our hearts
ONE million is a vast number for us to envisage. It is a thousand thousand. The very rich are described as millionaires. When we are asked an unanswerable question we describe it as being the "million-dollar question".
To learn that the recent earthquake in Haiti has left one million orphaned is breathtaking, unimaginable and heart-rending.
The dictionary describes an orphan as "a child whose both parents are dead or who has been abandoned by his or her parents, especially a child not adopted by another family". The orphans of Haiti are experiencing the cruelty of abandonment wrought by death. We need to adopt them into our hearts right now.
Charity is our impartial love for one another. We learn from the Scriptures that without charity we are nothing! Charity is not only one of the three great pillars of Christianity, it is the greatest of the three: "And, now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Charity will bring hope and from hope will spring faith. One million orphans need charity. They presently require charity more than they need hope and faith. But soon they will need hope, and after that they will search for faith.
Charity is the vehicle to deliver water, food and medicine, and then to deliver hope and faith. This is long-suffering charity, enduring charity. It is the sort of charity that is beginning in Haiti. It may have started in what has been described by various reporters in the region as a shambolic operation – but it has begun nonetheless.
It is all too easy in the immediate aftermath of a disaster to see the flaws, but how amazing to see charitable workers get there and get started so swiftly! Thank God for men and women who get on with the job and don't dither. Thankfully, the region has no political obstacles to prevent immediate delivery of aid. Leadership and co-ordination, I have no doubt, will kick in, and the hope is that it will do so before panic drives the homeless and the hungry to desperate actions.
The wisdom of those tasked with the huge responsibility of the practical organisation of relief should be utmost in our prayers at this time.
You and I can do this, and we can give what we can.
There are at least one million reasons so to do.
Show support for armed forces on Red Friday
I learn from an email forwarded to me by a friend that there is momentum for what is being described as Red Friday. This is a venture to show solidarity with our serving forces. The idea is that on Fridays, from now until our troops return from Afghanistan, we wear something red – a tie, a scarf, gloves. It is a good idea and one I hope will catch on. As we go about our weekly activities (permitted us by peace and hard-won freedom), it is all too easy to forget our soldiers unless we are reminded of them by horrific headlines. If one day in the week we don a red badge and use that to prompt us to think of them, their families, those who are already struggling to recover from injury, the bereaved, and indeed those innocents caught up in the conflict, then that can do nothing but good.
Set alongside this is the current debate regarding the future shape of our armed forces. Swingeing spending cuts are planned, and the result will lay its emphasis upon either the Army or the RAF and the Navy.
Recognition that future conflicts will differ from past ones means that it is not just as simple as shifting spending emphasis from the Navy and RAF towards the Army. This 21st Century already illustrates that one of the major tasks our forces are expected to accomplish is the winning of hearts and minds on a mass scale in the territories to which they are deployed. This runs parallel to their actual fighting capacity. The cuts are as much to do with these new strategic aims as they have to do with economics. Appropriate and relevant are the words being used more and more with regard to military operations.
But no matter what the new emphasis may be, our defence is also tied to our wider position in the world, and as such is about far more than just our protection, it is about overall defence and security worldwide. Unexpected and unforeseen are two different things altogether. We need to be equipped for both.
Mothers driven to the edge
More details were forthcoming this week about the tragic case on the mainland which drove a young mother to take her own life and that of her handicapped child. We also heard details of another case presently in court involving a mother who assisted her seriously ill daughter to end her life. This lady was the carer of her daughter who was aged 31 and had been ill since she was 17.
She has described how she first helped her daughter by giving her the morphine she requested to end her pain and then followed her daughter's actions by administering additional drugs when the initial dose was unsuccessful. The details of these and similar cases take us into a realm that we wish we never had to think about. But consider it we must, if we are to be a better neighbour and friend to those in need and see improved support for both the suffering and those whose task it is to be daily by their side. We need to come alongside.
It so happens that in both these cases it has been the mother who was driven to extreme actions. How awful the pain being witnessed and how dreadful the aspect of love that wrought such action! In ordinary circumstances a mother would die rather than see her child die whom she would strive to protect and nourish. But these mothers were driven to the point of believing, rightly or wrongly, that the best they could do was to end the life of their offspring. We are not created to die. We are created to live. We have been provided with the gift of eternal life. and that hope is our grand consolation when earthly life ends.
"There is life for a look at the crucified One,
There is life at this moment for you;
So look sinner look unto Him who has died
Unto Him who was nailed to the tree."
The Mothers of Israel turned the eyes of their children to the lifted up staff that their life might be assured. May we seek by our actions, not just by our words, to direct the eyes of the needy to Him who is Life Eternal.
Think On This:
You love not Death; love not the cause of Death. (Baxter)
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Weather for Belfast
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
