Red Letters

Since Tom Davis is one of the speakers at the Orphan Summit I'm going to, I ordered two of his books to read before the November Summit. The first to arrive is, Red Letters, Living a Faith That Bleeds. I had absolutely no idea what the book was about, other than he is obviously concerned for the orphan crisis of today or he probably wouldn't be one of the main speakers. The introduction alone was captivating. Here's an intro. section...

The Christian church owes an apology to the almost fifty million individuals in our world currently infected with HIV/AIDS.

Those of us who claim to follow Christ's teachings should be ashamed for what little we've done to help the countless millions of women, children, and orphans who have died or are dying. Entire nations are going up in flames while we watch them burn.

Bono and the supporters of the ONE Campaign are right to use words like "crises" and "emergency" when talking about the situation in Africa. The continent is on fire with AIDS, and unless drastic action is taken, entire countries will be wiped off the face of the planet by this disease.

Sadly, the church has been slow to act in response to this crises. Like the priest and Levite of Jesus' parable, we have passed by the man on the side of the road, too busy or too "holy" to involve ourselves in lending a helping hand.

Africa is indeed on fire. But as we argue or fuss about how it started and who should be saved first, thousands more children are orphaned each day. Every hour, another one thousand children will die. Did you know that you are just a short plane ride away from a world where eight-year-old girls prostitute themselves for food?

The true state of emergency lies within the church - it lies within us. It's our problem. We can't leave Africa's children lying by the side of the road as we pass on by.

----------------

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do for this crises; a perfect excuse is that I'm a homeschooling mom of nine in Virginia. I mean, if I lived in South Africa, I honestly would comb the public toilets looking to rescue the HIV babies that are daily abandoned there. But since we are across the ocean, it's so often out-of-sight-out-of-mind. However, God presents this crises to me, over and over. Actually about twenty times a day, as I look at my sweet Liberians, I think, " it could have been them." And the reality is, I know that those children deserve the love and respect every bit as much as all of ours.