So maybe you haven't heard. Maybe you live in a hole like me. Or under a rock. Maybe none of the above applies to you.
There's a horrible famine and drought currently happening in East Africa. I just learned this today because I live in a hole.
I read a really devastating article on Yahoo about the families struggling to find water and food. Mothers and fathers have had to leave their children behind to die, because they have to take care of other sons and daughters and don't have enough water to spare. Children are taking short breaks, falling asleep, and not waking up. Mothers are having to make choices to leave their little babies in God's hands as they continue on their journey with as many as 7 other children.
You would think people would be filled with compassion and heartache towards such horrible conditions and sufferings.
Not always.
As I finished reading the article, I went to the comments left by other people. Some sent their prayers to these families. Others weren't so kind.
There were people complaining that these people shouldn't be helped because they've brought it on themselves by having so many children. One man even suggested giving mothers ideas to kill their babies while yet unborn by punching themselves in the stomach. Another said that they'll never learn to stop "bad breeding behavior" if we don't leave them alone and stop helping them. Let someone else help them.
My initial response to this was... anger, to say the least. I honestly wanted to just go and punch one of those ignorant people in the face. I'm a pretty calm person, but when I get ticked off, I get really ticked off.
I have a friend (the one who's going to Germany, actually) who has been to Africa twice, once when she was 10, and again this past winter. She's worked at hospitals there. She was able to visit her Compassion child, Daniel. She's had quite a few months of experience being there.
The first time she went, she helped take care of a baby boy. He had been abandoned by a mother who couldn't take care of him anymore.
He was found buried in the dirt, covered in ants.
His head was swelled up to a size at least twice the size of a normal baby boy's head.
She got the chance to feed him, hold him, love him.
Maybe this story didn't help my point much. Maybe it proved others' points even more. But it shows something that I completely left out of the equation in my fit of anger.
Love.
That wasn't my first reaction. My first reaction was to go after those people leaving inconsiderate, uneducated comments with a hot dog stick and chase them till they beg for forgiveness. (Well, maybe not quite so... forceful a reaction)
But after I spurted off my outrage to a friend, he said the exact opposite of what I was feeling. And it convicted me.
Unfortunately, as I just figured out, Yahoo does not keep record of other people messages. Only yours (which makes no sense. What's the point of a conversation if you only have one side of it?). Therefore, I can't share exactly what he said with you.
But really. Sometimes I forget.
Sometimes I forget some people don't know love. They don't know Christ's love.
Sometimes I forget that a lot of those people in Africa, leaving dying children behind, don't know God's love.
Sometimes I forget what God's love looks like.
And because of that, I sometimes forget to show other people what Christ's love looks like.
Love is not easily angered.
What would real love had done? Real love would have had a heart so broken over the fact that those people, so ignorant and unknowing, didn't know true love. Those people don't know what they'll have to face one day.
Those people don't know that there's a way to escape what's coming.
Judgement.
Real love would have realized that what these people are missing isn't a brain, a little common sense, even a caring heart.
What's they're missing is Christ.
How can you protect life without love?
And how can you have true love without Christ?
How can you understand why you need Christ, unless you understand what's going to happen after you die?
I doubt this was really his point, but thanks Hicks Riley for your words of wisdom. (And there's your mentioning in my blog. Happy?)
Cheers♥
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