This Sunday is a day that before this year, I never honored. That before this year, I'm going to be completely honest, I didn't even know existed. This Sunday, November 4th, is Orphan Sunday.
The seeds of this united Orphan Sunday come especially as a gift from the Church in Africa. While attending a church service in Zambia, an American visitor was struck by the pastor’s passionate call to care for orphans in the local community, which had been ravaged by AIDS and poverty. Members of the church faced deep need themselves. But as the service ended, one after another stepped forward with money, food and other goods-some even taking off their own shoes and placing them in the offering for orphans.
The visitor, Gary Schneider, was so impacted that he began to help Zambian leaders coordinate Orphan Sunday efforts across Zambia. These efforts spread to the U.S. in 2003 with help from Every Orphan’s Hope and other organizations.
This picture is so beautiful to me, these people in Africa were so moved by the needs of others, by the needs of these children they pushed the boundaries and truly gave of themselves. Even though, they were all in great need themselves, they answered the call. They were even taking off their own shoes! Which was likely, their only pair!
It begs the question, would we do this? Those of us who live so comfortably in our homes with A/C and heat, our running water and shelter, our flat screen TV's, and iphones, ipads, and a closet FULL of shoes! Would we truly give until it hurts to answer the call?
I am currently on a journey to answer this for myself. I just finished a book that slapped me around with every page I read and now I am left wanting to Radically change some things that I do in my life so that I can begin to truly answer the call to take back my faith from the American Dream. This is going to be a year long experiment in my life, along with my husband and 2 girls, and I cant wait to get started! (more info on this experiment to come later....)
But today is about Orphan Sunday.... let me just give you a few statistics... there is an estimated 143,000,000 orphans in the world today (from a recent UNICEF report).
Every 15 seconds, another child in AFRICA becomes an AIDS orphan. (At the end of every year, 2,102,400 more children will become orphans, in Africa alone.)
EVERY DAY, 5,760 more children in the world become orphans.
EVERY 2.2 SECONDS another orphan ages out, with no family and no home.
This is staggering! Unreal and unjust!
As I mentioned I just finished the book Radical by David Platt (go... buy it and read it... now!) and I want to put a little piece of the book here for you to read...
"It is easy for the numbers and statistics regarding the poor and needy to seem cold and distant. The idea of billions in poverty or twenty-six thousand children dying from starvation or preventable disease before we lay our heads on our pillows tonight seems hard to imagine.
This was the case for my wife and me when we began the process of adopting our first son. We had read the statistics before... and they were staggering. Millions of orphans in Africa, a number that is rising dramatically as a result of the AIDS crisis that is currently taking the lives of moms and dads across the sub-Saharan plain. Millions of orphans in Asia, many if not most of whom are destined for lives in crime and prostitution if they are not adopted. Millions of orphans in Europe, Latin America, and the US.
As overwhelming as these numbers were to us, I have to admit they were still just numbers to us before we traveled to Kazakhstan to get our son. It's not that we didn't care. After all, we were going through the adoption process. But the number still seemed distant, removed from our daily life in suburban Birmingham.
But everything changed when we made our first trip to the orphanage in Kazakhstan. We saw the children playing outside. We walked past their rooms inside. Suddenly those numbers on a page came alive in our hears. We realized that it was Caleb who was sleeping in one of those cribs, and it was Caleb who was included in those numbers. All at once the numbers became real.... and personal.
We learned orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in you arms. But once you do, everything changes.
So when you and I hear staggering numbers and statistics about the poor and needy around us and around the world, we have a choice. We can switch the channel on our mega-TVs and continue our comfortable, untroubled, ordinary, churchgoing lives as if the global poor don't exist. We can let these numbers remain cold, distant, and almost imaginary. Or we can open our eyes and our lives to the realities that surround us and begin considering the faces that are represented by these numbers."
This is my challenge to you. Maybe you are like me and you didn't even know that this Sunday existed until now. Maybe you knew the orphan stats and you thought to yourself, "that too big... what difference can I really make?" Wherever you sit today, you can do something. Find an organization and give, research what you can do, pray for these little children and their families, start saving today to take a missions trip for yourself so you can see the faces of these little children. Maybe you are feeling the call to adopt or be a foster parent.
We are so blessed to live in this country... how can we sit back and do nothing!!! The bible tells us in Isaiah 1:17 that we are to "defend the cause of the fatherless" and in Psalms 82:3-4 to "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; Maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Deliver the weak and needy from the hand of the wicked."
It's a big need and a big challenge....
Will you answer the call?
The seeds of this united Orphan Sunday come especially as a gift from the Church in Africa. While attending a church service in Zambia, an American visitor was struck by the pastor’s passionate call to care for orphans in the local community, which had been ravaged by AIDS and poverty. Members of the church faced deep need themselves. But as the service ended, one after another stepped forward with money, food and other goods-some even taking off their own shoes and placing them in the offering for orphans.
The visitor, Gary Schneider, was so impacted that he began to help Zambian leaders coordinate Orphan Sunday efforts across Zambia. These efforts spread to the U.S. in 2003 with help from Every Orphan’s Hope and other organizations.
This picture is so beautiful to me, these people in Africa were so moved by the needs of others, by the needs of these children they pushed the boundaries and truly gave of themselves. Even though, they were all in great need themselves, they answered the call. They were even taking off their own shoes! Which was likely, their only pair!
It begs the question, would we do this? Those of us who live so comfortably in our homes with A/C and heat, our running water and shelter, our flat screen TV's, and iphones, ipads, and a closet FULL of shoes! Would we truly give until it hurts to answer the call?
I am currently on a journey to answer this for myself. I just finished a book that slapped me around with every page I read and now I am left wanting to Radically change some things that I do in my life so that I can begin to truly answer the call to take back my faith from the American Dream. This is going to be a year long experiment in my life, along with my husband and 2 girls, and I cant wait to get started! (more info on this experiment to come later....)
But today is about Orphan Sunday.... let me just give you a few statistics... there is an estimated 143,000,000 orphans in the world today (from a recent UNICEF report).
Every 15 seconds, another child in AFRICA becomes an AIDS orphan. (At the end of every year, 2,102,400 more children will become orphans, in Africa alone.)
EVERY DAY, 5,760 more children in the world become orphans.
EVERY 2.2 SECONDS another orphan ages out, with no family and no home.
This is staggering! Unreal and unjust!
As I mentioned I just finished the book Radical by David Platt (go... buy it and read it... now!) and I want to put a little piece of the book here for you to read...
"It is easy for the numbers and statistics regarding the poor and needy to seem cold and distant. The idea of billions in poverty or twenty-six thousand children dying from starvation or preventable disease before we lay our heads on our pillows tonight seems hard to imagine.
This was the case for my wife and me when we began the process of adopting our first son. We had read the statistics before... and they were staggering. Millions of orphans in Africa, a number that is rising dramatically as a result of the AIDS crisis that is currently taking the lives of moms and dads across the sub-Saharan plain. Millions of orphans in Asia, many if not most of whom are destined for lives in crime and prostitution if they are not adopted. Millions of orphans in Europe, Latin America, and the US.
As overwhelming as these numbers were to us, I have to admit they were still just numbers to us before we traveled to Kazakhstan to get our son. It's not that we didn't care. After all, we were going through the adoption process. But the number still seemed distant, removed from our daily life in suburban Birmingham.
But everything changed when we made our first trip to the orphanage in Kazakhstan. We saw the children playing outside. We walked past their rooms inside. Suddenly those numbers on a page came alive in our hears. We realized that it was Caleb who was sleeping in one of those cribs, and it was Caleb who was included in those numbers. All at once the numbers became real.... and personal.
We learned orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in you arms. But once you do, everything changes.
So when you and I hear staggering numbers and statistics about the poor and needy around us and around the world, we have a choice. We can switch the channel on our mega-TVs and continue our comfortable, untroubled, ordinary, churchgoing lives as if the global poor don't exist. We can let these numbers remain cold, distant, and almost imaginary. Or we can open our eyes and our lives to the realities that surround us and begin considering the faces that are represented by these numbers."
This is my challenge to you. Maybe you are like me and you didn't even know that this Sunday existed until now. Maybe you knew the orphan stats and you thought to yourself, "that too big... what difference can I really make?" Wherever you sit today, you can do something. Find an organization and give, research what you can do, pray for these little children and their families, start saving today to take a missions trip for yourself so you can see the faces of these little children. Maybe you are feeling the call to adopt or be a foster parent.
We are so blessed to live in this country... how can we sit back and do nothing!!! The bible tells us in Isaiah 1:17 that we are to "defend the cause of the fatherless" and in Psalms 82:3-4 to "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; Maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Deliver the weak and needy from the hand of the wicked."
It's a big need and a big challenge....
Will you answer the call?
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