Summer 2011 temperatures in Vancouver, Langley, and the Fraser Valley of British Columbia are cooler than normal with an abundance of rain. BC is well watered and green. We are blessed. We stand in stark contrast to the rest of Canada and the United States where summer temperatures are sky high and breaking records. Across the United states from Texas to the Dakotas and up into the Canadian prairies, from Colorado to New England and Alberta to Nova Scotia, the hottest summer in sixty years occasions a horrible drought devastating live stock, wild life, crops, and forests across the continent. It is a summer in need of prayer on top of a spring of floods, tornadoes, fires, and for Japan earthquakes and a tsunami. There is much to pray about and much to move our hearts and helping hands in concern and compassion across North America and around the world.
Not to minimize the importance of the suffering of many in North America, I wish to focus on two parts of the world where suffering is particularly acute, not in the lime light of the world's media attention, and therefore "out of sight and out of mind:" Kenya and North Korea. . .
In north eastern Kenya, also experiencing drought, the town of Dadaab hosts a refugee camp built to accommodate 80,000 refugees. According to Amnesty International, 1,300+ refugees are pouring into Kenya daily in flight from Somalia's civil conflict and the worse drought in over 60 years. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees is pleading with Kenya to open an extension of the Dadaab camp with the likelihood of increasing the camps population five fold to 400,000 making Dadaab the largest refugee camp in the world growing by 15,000 each week. The associated problems are enormous. What can be done for Somalia's starving millions who are beyond the help of international agencies. At the Dabaab refugee camp, how do you feed 400,000 refugees and attend to the medical conditions of starvation, especially for grossly malnourished, starving children? How do you triage and transition 400,000 refugees into lives beyond temporary custodial care? How do you raise the awareness and intervention to the rest of the world to provide answers to a region, the Horn of Africa, where more than 10 million people are being affected by the drought? The Canadian government has pledged $50 million of aid through aid groups responding to the crisis.
In North Korea, famine once again threatens the lives more than 6 million people. In stark desperation, millions of North Koreans are desperately hungry living on the edge of life eating grass and weeds, the sole ingredients of watery soup. The most vulnerable and most likely to perish are the children and the elderly. The United Nations World Food Program, according to the Vancouver Sun (July 23, 2011), "says North Korea faces its worst food shortage in a decade . . . " and yet "the world has been slow to react . . ." What can be done in the face of realities that shut out the world from humanitarian intervention? How does one penetrate the seemly impenetrable for the sake of suffering millions?
Within the framework of a Christian world view, we know that Christ identifies with the suffering of others, especially of innocents. He calls us to action in prayer and human agency. Through our prayers, God understands that we are focused and attentive to the needs of others. He knows whose hearts and lives are open and ready to act in response to suffering humanity. We can daily pray personally for the dear, suffering peoples of Somalia, Kenya and North Korea. We can organize expatriate immigrants from Horn of Africa nations and Korea, north and south, to pray.
We believe God moves our hearts to act in ways we can. For many it is to provide the ways and means to intervene financially. For fewer with skills and expertise, it is to be available and to go when and if called to serve directly when the opportunities arise. It is to rise above complacency and to act personally and collectively on their behalf. God's response to human suffering is often to engage human agency as a means of grace on behalf of others. In Matthew 25: 35 & 36, we read Christ's words: "I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was in prison (refugee camp?) and you came to Me. . . in as much as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to Me." Human agency! You are God's means of grace!
I write specifically to the 22,000 TWU alumni now living and working in more than 80 countries around the world. Rise-up! Pray for the 10 million starving people in Horn of Africa, for 400,000 refugees in Dabaab refugee camp, for the 6 million starving people in North Korea, for the international aid agencies working to serve the enormous needs that confront millions of others. For those who are specifically called to go and serve directly, go! Serve, in Jesus' name! Embrace for yourselves personally the one word motto of the world-wide Salvation Army: OTHERS! Know that when you pray, and go, and serve, you are not alone! Christ also said (Matthew 28:20) "I am with you always . . ."
Not to minimize the importance of the suffering of many in North America, I wish to focus on two parts of the world where suffering is particularly acute, not in the lime light of the world's media attention, and therefore "out of sight and out of mind:" Kenya and North Korea. . .
In north eastern Kenya, also experiencing drought, the town of Dadaab hosts a refugee camp built to accommodate 80,000 refugees. According to Amnesty International, 1,300+ refugees are pouring into Kenya daily in flight from Somalia's civil conflict and the worse drought in over 60 years. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees is pleading with Kenya to open an extension of the Dadaab camp with the likelihood of increasing the camps population five fold to 400,000 making Dadaab the largest refugee camp in the world growing by 15,000 each week. The associated problems are enormous. What can be done for Somalia's starving millions who are beyond the help of international agencies. At the Dabaab refugee camp, how do you feed 400,000 refugees and attend to the medical conditions of starvation, especially for grossly malnourished, starving children? How do you triage and transition 400,000 refugees into lives beyond temporary custodial care? How do you raise the awareness and intervention to the rest of the world to provide answers to a region, the Horn of Africa, where more than 10 million people are being affected by the drought? The Canadian government has pledged $50 million of aid through aid groups responding to the crisis.
In North Korea, famine once again threatens the lives more than 6 million people. In stark desperation, millions of North Koreans are desperately hungry living on the edge of life eating grass and weeds, the sole ingredients of watery soup. The most vulnerable and most likely to perish are the children and the elderly. The United Nations World Food Program, according to the Vancouver Sun (July 23, 2011), "says North Korea faces its worst food shortage in a decade . . . " and yet "the world has been slow to react . . ." What can be done in the face of realities that shut out the world from humanitarian intervention? How does one penetrate the seemly impenetrable for the sake of suffering millions?
Within the framework of a Christian world view, we know that Christ identifies with the suffering of others, especially of innocents. He calls us to action in prayer and human agency. Through our prayers, God understands that we are focused and attentive to the needs of others. He knows whose hearts and lives are open and ready to act in response to suffering humanity. We can daily pray personally for the dear, suffering peoples of Somalia, Kenya and North Korea. We can organize expatriate immigrants from Horn of Africa nations and Korea, north and south, to pray.
We believe God moves our hearts to act in ways we can. For many it is to provide the ways and means to intervene financially. For fewer with skills and expertise, it is to be available and to go when and if called to serve directly when the opportunities arise. It is to rise above complacency and to act personally and collectively on their behalf. God's response to human suffering is often to engage human agency as a means of grace on behalf of others. In Matthew 25: 35 & 36, we read Christ's words: "I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was in prison (refugee camp?) and you came to Me. . . in as much as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to Me." Human agency! You are God's means of grace!
I write specifically to the 22,000 TWU alumni now living and working in more than 80 countries around the world. Rise-up! Pray for the 10 million starving people in Horn of Africa, for 400,000 refugees in Dabaab refugee camp, for the 6 million starving people in North Korea, for the international aid agencies working to serve the enormous needs that confront millions of others. For those who are specifically called to go and serve directly, go! Serve, in Jesus' name! Embrace for yourselves personally the one word motto of the world-wide Salvation Army: OTHERS! Know that when you pray, and go, and serve, you are not alone! Christ also said (Matthew 28:20) "I am with you always . . ."
1 comments:
I wonder how you can reconcile the need for Christ when your faculty seems not to acknowledge Genesis 1. According to Dennis Venema on NPR.org if evolution is the catalyst from which man sprang then where does sin fit in? Where does the need for a Savior fit in?
The Gap theory has no answer for these questions neither does evolution. To accept a macro view of evolution is to deny the need for Christ. You also call Christ a liar when he spoke of Adam and Eve as the first man and woman and he does make direct mention of their son Abel as one of the one's for which Israel will make atonement.
When I send my four children to college it will definitely be to one that upholds scripture instead of the secular scientific capriciousness of the day.
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