Abandoned-Orphaned

Would You Press the Button? (part five)

Competition. It’s the American way, right?

Position pitted against position. People pitted against people. Nation pitted against nation.

Liberals versus conservatives. Right versus left. Protestants versus Catholics. Bloods versus Crips. Yankees versus Red Sox. Coke versus Pepsi. America versus China. It goes on and on and on. We’re bombarded by it from every angle.

It rears its head in all circles – individual, group, community, ethnic, and national. It’s endemic in every type of venture and activity – corporate, social, and athletic. It infects every part of being – physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Almost everything is turned into a battle for supremacy, a winner/loser scenario. Every traffic light becomes a herald of the race. Every minor disagreement becomes a last stand.

Some contests are healthy. A little rivalry or struggle helps to temper and test us, sometimes entertain us. Without experience with challenge, we are inept in the greater battles.

But we often forget that each victory gained has a necessary opposite outcome: persons who summarily experience failure and the ramifications of defeat.

It’s evident even in the seemingly mundane. When one advertising agency wins a major account from another, people are fired. People lose their homes. Marriages fail.

Yes, everything has its consequences. The pursuit of personal or corporate triumph means that the button is pushed continually.

And as we unfairly use snap decisions and opinions to polarize things, put people and positions into "us versus them" settings, we use such grounds to rationalize such competition. After all, it’s just "the Chinese" or "the liberals" we are competing against, right? By generalizing and sub-humanizing, we feel better about pushing the button.

"Gotta stop those darn Indians and Southeast Asians from taking our jobs and profits!"

As we protect American jobs from going overseas, an unemployed Thai worker makes the excruciating decision to sell his eldest daughter into the sex trade. To not do so would mean that his other three daughters would perish from starvation.

As we place high tariffs on agricultural products from India, a farmer outside of New Delhi cannot meet his obligations to his finance company. Broken and out of options, he and his whole family drink poison.

As we stigmatize those who don’t "buy American," we lessen the ability for the laborer in China to feed his family on $2 per day. He abandons his child at the local orphanage.

We’re one of the richest nations on the planet. We compete to get the newer car and bigger home while people living in cardboard boxes die. We have surplus in excessive abundance. We don’t need to win every economic global battle.

Folks, it’s not supposed to be this way. Don’t buy into the lie. Jesus taught against such thinking.

We have to embrace a more global philanthropic perspective, a more neighborly perspective.

After all, the whole world is simply that...a collection of neighbors.

"The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:14)

To be continued...

Mother's Day - Past

Many of you know that my mother committed suicide four and a half years ago. For me, Mother’s Day will always be a bittersweet reminder of past memories savored and future memories lost. I know the pain of losing a mother way too soon, of losing a mother tragically and unexpectedly.

My loss obviously pales in comparison to that of a ten year old who saw her mother succumb to the ravishes of AIDS and now heads the remaining household of four children younger than herself. But I do understand on some level the feeling of having love ripped from you in such a way to cause deep, lingering wounds.

It’s long...but I offer below the letter that I wrote to my mother and read at her funeral. Maybe it will help you to remember or appreciate your own mother or the mother of your children today. Maybe it will assist you also in understanding that an orphan simply isn’t a child who lost parents. That child is a real life with real hurts and real memories. Her parents were real individuals with real stories and real love.

 

(Image: Sylvia Myhill with our daughter, Faith Myhill, shortly after she was adopted in November, 2002)

YOU BROUGHT ALL THE PIECES TOGETHER, MOM

Dear Mom – my sweet, precious Mom

You were always there for me, Mom. All my cherished memories from childhood have you at the center. You were a good part of the glue that held us intact. You truly loved us; went out of your way to please us. And you were very proud of me, I know.

...and you brought all the pieces together, Mom.

I’m sure the dictionary would simply define a mother by position, not influence. It might address some of the qualities of being a mother. But you were much, much more than that, Mom. You gave us the two most important things that you were capable of giving – your love and your time. And you gave in abundance.

You probably never realized just how much God used you to shape me, Mom. I know that you obviously know these things to a degree, but I just wanted to publicly thank you for that great love, that great influence.

I was given my analytical side by Dad, and always wanted to please him through developing such cognitive abilities. But the sweet creative side, that wonderful balance and passion within me, came through you, Mom – my example, my teacher, my muse.

I can still remember a young boy in his room in England, looking out the back window, painfully trying to draw a picture of the house just over the fence line. The attempt was without depth, without perspective, without proportion. A tender mother knelt down and said, "Look honey. Look at the house. Look how the windows aren’t set right into the corners. Look how the roof line actually protrudes over the structure below." A brief moment. A powerful moment. I never looked at things the same way again.

You fueled that creativity in me. Your early sketches, rug designs, numerous macramé creations, sewing and fabulous knitting work. Likewise, God used you to knit the strands together in our lives, bringing order and wonder to the materials provided.

You also truly shined through your stained-glass art, Mom. Everyone was blessed by it. You didn’t hoard it. You willingly shared it. Your favorite subject matter for such designs - animals and angels - is indicative of your passions for things both simple and supernatural.

The pieces of glass were of great variety - of different shapes (either smooth or jagged); of different colors, opaqueness or transparency; and of different textures, bubble patterns, and iridescence. Individually they were simply an interesting diversity of fragments. But you brought them all together into a beautiful whole where the result was truly much greater than the sum of its parts.

A stained glass piece then needs the light to shine through it for it to truly reveal its brilliance and to cast its wonder beyond itself, projecting out an array of colors that fills a room and brings delight to the heart. You were that ray of light, Mom. You gave these creations away with a big smile and tender wishes, allowing them to have a radiance from within. You were the light source that shone through the tessera and brought gladness to the spirit.

Like the stained glass pieces you brought together into such a wonderful unity of diversity, so you did also with our lives, Mom. I had broken pieces, jagged pieces, pieces of inferior form and quality, pieces of odd color and texture. But you lovingly worked with them, trusting that your son could also be a work of art, something to be proud of.

You brought all the pieces together, Mom.

One of my most cherished times was to see a beaming mother adoring the paintings of her son on public display to thousands of people. Followed by the simple e-mail stating "I’m so proud of you, son" when those same paintings were made available on the Internet. God gave me the talent, but you were the vehicle for it, the immediate encouragement and affirmation of it. Thank you, Mom.

A piano.

Eighty-eight contrasting notes. Major and minor keys, sharps and flats. Strike any two keys randomly and you probably have discord, disharmony. But just like the stained glass, you brought all the diverse tones into unity, working them into wonderful arrangements – melodies of great harmony and passion. Different tempos. Different intensities. But all beautiful. All masterfully brought together and lovingly played as two young boys listened on, in awe of their wonderfully-talented mother. This same mom, who had just made a shepherd’s pie, was now casting a sense of wonder in us, entertaining us, firing passions within us. The same mom who had just stepped out of the kitchen and fed us (as our greatest chef) now stepped onto the grand stage within our minds (as our greatest piano maestro) and played for an elated audience of two.

The sounds of your favorites – Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and yes, Elton John - gave me the ear for the auditorily beautiful, just like your art had given me an eye for the visually beautiful. What a wonderful balance you provided.

You brought all the pieces together, Mom.

When we were children, you rocked us. When we were teenagers you rocked with us. Just as you gave us a passion for music, you shared our passion for the same music – Pink Floyd, Genesis, Eric Clapton and others. One of my fondest memories of you is seeing you there, clapping, dancing, reflecting, at the Pink Floyd concert – not as a chaperone, but as a fellow fan. Our friends said you were a cool mom. Words cannot express what that meant to me, meant to us, to hear our teenage peers expressing comments like that. I cannot remember a single moment where I was embarrassed or ashamed to have you around them. Other friends didn’t want to be seen with their mothers, wanted instead to be dropped off at school on the corner so their friends didn’t see their "goofy" parents. Not true with you, Mom. I was proud of you and your stature, your "cool" reputation, amongst my friends. Instead of division, you brought unity.

You brought all the pieces together, Mom.

A kitchen.

A dizzying array of stoves, crock pots, pressure cookers, food processors, fryers, pots, pans, utensils and more. Just equipment and tools. But in your hands they too, became part of a remarkable symphony. You rarely used a cookbook. What impressed me, and what was impressed upon me, was your knack to simply create as your heart led you. A haphazard assortment of ingredients that just happened to be on hand – spices, vegetables and meats; unprepared items and leftovers – become a gourmet treat. You could craft amazing meals seemingly out of nothing, taking random elements and bringing them into wonderful unity.

You brought all the pieces together, Mom.

The world.

A fascinating mix of people, places, tribes and tongues. You talked often of discovering it, of traveling together to see all of it. You wanted to experience it and bring all its elements together in your mind - part of that desire to bring the pieces together, Mom. I heard your heart and started having similar yearnings. I’ve now been to more countries than I can count. I was scheduled to leave for nine more the day after you took your greatest journey home to the Father. That trip was postponed, but will now have even more depth of meaning to me. I will relish every road traveled, every adventure revealed, every experience encountered, remembering that the passion to journey initially came through you, Mom.

You brought all the pieces together, Mom.

Our family’s life together.

We were quite the mix of personalities, weren’t we, Mom? An interesting, but trying, combination of dichotomies - shy and exertive, mind and heart, intuition and thought, faith and hard reasoning, creative and analytical, judging and forgiving. You tried so hard to bring all those pieces together, didn’t you? You sacrificed your own desires and dreams to nurture family unity. You gave of yourself in order to give to me – your heart, your time, your finances.

You always shouldered any problems, wishing to take on the burden to create healing and growth. Your sacrifice and commitment to the family was absolutely amazing.

The tragic irony of your passing is that, even now, you bring all the pieces together. God’s word – His promise – is that ALL things work together for our good and for His glory. I hold onto that promise now, believing that your soul is at peace, and believing that your family will continue on in peace, in unity – a unity you constantly worked at by bringing all the pieces together, Mom.

The prayer of Francis of Assisi is printed in the funeral memorial program. What a precious and applicable prayer it is today: "Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace..." It is you, Mom. It is you. You are that instrument even now.

The prayer ends with the line "It is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

Mom, I begged God for the answer to that question on Wednesday, as I propped up on the tree that you leant against in your final hours. In anguish, I cried out to God for some sort of sign that you are with Him - that truly being the ONLY consolation. On a grey day with nothing but thick overcast, the sun momentarily broke through and I could feel it upon my head. I looked up and saw it cutting through the clouds. Bright, yet softened. I felt a comfort, but wanted more.

God’s plan is summarized in one simple statement: Acknowledge that we all fall painfully short of God’s holy standard and simply trust that He has reached out to us with a truly precious gift – eternal life available through His son, Jesus, as the sacrifice for our shortcomings, as our passage into eternity. You did that, Mom.

I returned from the tree and saw your diary entry: You acknowledged shortcomings, sins that we all possess. You said that you were giving your sins to Jesus. You wrote "I give it ALL to you, Jesus. Forgive me please. Please help me with my longings." You had that simple faith of a child, Mom. Scripture tells us that Jesus is that sin-bearer, the same sin-bearer that you called to in your diary to take your sins for you. We just have to accept Him as such. You did that, Mom. And now you are making your heavenly shepherd’s pie in heaven – and for the Great Shepherd.

Further affirmation came moments later. Dad, Stu and I were sitting in the game room. Dad asked me if that was my new Bible sitting on the table. I had assumed it was his. It then became clear, Mom, that it was a Bible you had just bought. There was a bookmark in it. It was a chapter I had asked you to read. To the very end, you sought to honor me, to understand, to continue to seek God. I knew this, Mom, but I never fully appreciated it until that moment.

Jesus said, "My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ."

Jesus desires unity. He ultimately puts all the pieces together. Jesus was in you.

...and you brought all the pieces together, Mom.

Psalm 23 was shared here at your service: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quite waters, he restores my soul." That is exactly what He did, isn’t it, Mom? He took you to an open area, to a tree beside a stream. He has now restored your soul and has brought your pieces together.

Mom, you were my biggest fan, my cheerleader, my encourager. I will continue to be encouraged by your love, your influence. May I now draw upon God and the wonderful example He provided through you – to bring all the pieces together.

I love you, Mom

Your son always,

Paul

The Mega-issue (part four)

We have talked about two chain reactions, two cycles.

The first is how the rescue of orphaned and abandoned children (the mega-issue) affects so many other problems and concerns – poverty, HIV/AIDS, prostitution, child exploitation and other interrelated matters. To save children is to proactively attack and diminish all these societal plagues and afflictions. As children are liberated from the vicious cycle, parts of the cycle unravel, producing a geometric impact that reaches through generations. It’s not just about the current statistical decline of these troubles; it’s about the rescued children’s children, grand-children, great-grand children and beyond, who are now freed from the cause and effect spiral of despair. The changes project forward exponentially...because of children’s removal from the cycle.

The second regards an expanding numerical impact also. As the Church is the vehicle and purpose of rescue, children learn about their value in God’s eyes. They learn what the Bible has to say about teaching others, helping others, changing others. The children are removed from the problem but also become part of the solution as they teach against abuse, addiction and exploitation. They become an army of change agents for their communities, nation and world. The changes project forward exponentially...because of more workers attacking the cycle.

We have also talked about the spiritual element inherent in the church being the means of rescue and how this also has additional and multiplicative ramifications for eternity. People are attracted to the church because of the church’s love for the children. And the children above not only go into the world teaching about the issues of the temporal world, but they go teaching about the gift of eternity. These children become an army in another sense – an army of missionaries, spreading the greater truth of love and transformation. The changes project forward eternally...because of the spread of the message of new life.

It is this last thought that I’d like to now briefly expand upon.

Many parts of the developing world have evangelical Christian populations of less than 5%. In most of those same regions the composition of born-again believers is 2% and under. These are the same areas where significant orphaned and abandoned children struggle to survive.

In a sense, those red areas of blemish described in the previous section The Mega-issue (part three) also represent areas where Biblical Christianity is less than 5% established. As the white crosses of hope serve to shrink those red sections, the percentage of believers increases accordingly. Those believers, in turn, can expand the Kingdom exponentially as they take on the task of outreach and evangelism.

In short, orphans represent a unique opportunity for the recruitment and training of workers for the harvest fields of eternity. What a huge opportunity that really is...tens of millions of children ready to be raised by the Church family; tens of millions of children that have been orphaned and abandoned out of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and animistic families; tens of millions of children that will be ‘sent out’ as missionaries to those same communities.

God works in all things. The tragedy of our time is also the greatest prospect of our time.

Do you want to know what the evangelical Christian response should be to radical Islamic schools that take in children, indoctrinate them, and send them out as terrorists, as armies of hatred and destruction?

Answer: Support indigenous churches all over the world to take in the orphaned children of Muslim communities, train them up in the knowledge of the Lord, and send them out as missionaries, as armies of love and reconciliation!

The mega-issue is now. The mega-opportunity is now.

The Mega-issue (part three)

All of society’s woes are related to one thing...sin. This is the point of commonality.

The world and everything in it was originally created as flawless, unspoiled...perfect. The world we live in today is not that world. It has been gravely corrupted as a consequence of a devastating choice. Everything we now see as imperfect, evil and tragic can be traced back to that specific moment that shattered the timeline forward. Murder followed. Disease followed. Abuses of children followed. Orphans followed.

The first Adam brought death and disease. The second Adam, Christ, brought life and healing.

Christ established His Body, the Church. The Spirit uses the Church to regenerate, restore and reconcile. The Church is God’s principal instrument to tackle the core commonality. Only the Church can truly address the mega-issue and everything it touches and represents.

God has positioned His Church around the world for such a time as this...

Orphaned and abandoned children flood the region previously known as the Third World. The burden knows no boundaries or borders. The whole area is awash with the weeping of desperate children that don’t ask for much...just simple safety, security, and sustenance...and the knowledge that somebody loves them. Much of that same area is populated by the Church, local indigenous bodies of believers that understand the call and strength of James 1:27 and over forty other passages of Scripture related to orphans; that understand the heart of God for the lost children who are abandoned and polluted by this cruel and wicked world.

Visualize a map of the developing world produced on a letter-sized piece of paper. Imagine that all the areas where significant orphan populations exist are represented by blood-red dots. In India, Africa and Southeast Asia, these red dots converge to form huge swatches and blotches across large urban areas. Whole regions are bathed in crimson.

Now think of a second map copied onto a similarly-sized transparency sheet. It is faint and translucent accept for opaque white crosses printed all over it, each symbolizing where specific indigenous churches are established. In those same large city agglomerations above, the white crosses join hands to form a white field, a safety net of rescue, a mesh of hope.

Now imagine placing the transparency sheet on top of the red-stained sheet. The blood and cries of the children are covered by the crosses. The regions of red blemishes are punctuated by little white points of intersection and hope. Most areas where orphans live and die are populated by native churches that are strategically placed to rescue them, temporally and eternally.

The numbers of people represented by these white crosses aren’t necessarily large; the sizes of the crosses aren’t very big in some areas; the spacing between crosses is quite far apart in others. But they are spread out over the same geography where the mega-issue continually and persistently rears its ugly head. There is a presence. There are partners for the task.

Indigenous churches are uniquely positioned to care for the children of their communities. Most have the heart and are responding in obedience and love with limited resources; they just need a boost to more broadly and effectively engage the task.

As these churches do engage the task, they expand. Rescued children accept the promises of Christ and commit to love and serve Him. Surrounding communities, warmed by the affection of the church towards their children, are attracted to the church and find love and forgiveness there. The children, themselves, go out amongst neighbors and peers who witness their transformation and want a part of it. The churches grow.

Imagine those white crosses increasing in size and numbers as they start to take in the 150 million orphans in their vicinities. Imagine them absorbing the scarlet stains like sponges, swelling and multiplying as a result; the purity and hope of Christ covering the abuses and corruptions of man. Churches develop and extend. The Kingdom advances.

The Mega-issue (part two)

Extreme poverty, the devaluation of women, illiteracy, disease, sexual exploitation, slavery, child labor, drug abuse, pedophilia, addiction, child soldiers, violent extremism – they are all results and components (sub-issues) of the mega-issue of orphaned and abandoned children.

They interlace and provide momentum to a truly wicked cycle of calamitous reach and proportions.

Any particular sub-issue has hugely damaging consequences. AIDS, for example, causes millions upon millions of orphans as children’s parents are afflicted and felled. These orphaned children are then menaced and victimized by despicable individuals who are contaminated with HIV/AIDS themselves. Some of these people believe the wretched lie that, by sleeping with a young virgin, they can be cured of AIDS. Others, who are known to be infected and are stigmatized by their communities, hunt vulnerable children as the only option to act out their sexual desires. In addition, orphaned children, unable to find shelter and feed themselves, will reluctantly or forcibly enter into lives of prostitution or serial ‘sugar daddy’ relationships. There, they find food, but they also find something else...HIV/AIDS. The vicious cycle continues.

Any particular sub-issue feeds that same sub-issue. Prostitutes die of AIDS and leave orphans who sell their bodies for food. Poverty breeds the desperate act of abandonment, creating a whole class of children who are, themselves, deeply impoverished. Drugs take lives and produce orphans who end up using and selling addictive substances. Child soldiers are forced to decimate villages, generating orphaned children who are then stolen into warfare. Female children are discarded, reinforcing their society’s belief that they are worthless, and devaluing the status of girls and women yet further. The vicious cycle continues.

Any particular sub-issue also feeds the other sub-issues. Poverty causes girls to be traded into prostitution. Drugs kill and leave orphans that become enslaved in child labor schemes. AIDS ravishes communities, triggering orphan populations that eventually find solace in drugs. Poverty-stricken orphans are recruited into radical Islamic schools, fostering future terrorism activities. Young drug users spread HIV/AIDS through tainted needles. Child prostitutes allow pedophiles to discover and explore their behavior, spawning more pedophiliac activity. The combinations and permutations are countless and endless. They are all interrelated. The vicious cycle continues...and spirals outward.

The question then becomes, "What is the easiest point in which to insert oneself into the cycle in order to break the cycle?"

There really are two choices. You can either try to change things at the societal level by implementing broad outreaches for each issue (i.e. HIV/AIDS prevention programs, child labor laws and enforcement, anti-prostitution measures, financial aid packages, etc.)...or you can simply break a common link in the chain and severely attack the umbrella issues accordingly and jointly. A very strategic point of commonality is the mega-issue of orphaned and abandoned children.

As orphans are rescued, all those dreadful demons are dealt massive blows. As children are taken off of the streets, prostitution is diminished, pedophiliac opportunities are minimized, drug dealing and usage are reduced, recruiting grounds for child soldiers and extremists are decreased, child trafficking pools are restricted, AIDS infection is lessened, and on and on. It’s a highly-strategic ‘multiple birds with one stone’ scenario.

The issues do need to be tackled at the societal level also. There is always a need for general awareness programs and measures. But where the ‘rubber meets the road,’ there are very few involvement opportunities that have the punch, power, and potential like the rescue and care of orphans.

There is, of course, another element to this: mobilization and geometric impact. As children are rescued and restored, trained up to honor life and love others, they will go into their communities to teach against prostitution, child labor, drugs, slavery and the other issues. The children are taken out of the statistics and the cause/effect cycle, but are also part of the greater solution as they become advocates and act as compassionate examples to transform lives.

Yes, we have still limited the discussion to temporal terms here. Next, we will converse about local indigenous churches as the practical and spiritual tools of rescue. This is the most exciting part...seeing orphaned and abandoned children comforted, sheltered and educated...by believers who touch eternity as they touch the temporal; by churches that are willing to break the cycle of abuse and exploitation; by pastors who are fully engaged in the mega-issue.

The Mega-issue (part one)

John and Mary Smith are driving home from a New Year’s Eve party when their car is struck from the side by a drunk driver. The impact takes the life of their three year old daughter, Danielle. Broken and angry, they start a political advocacy group to support candidates and advocate laws that take a tough stance against repeat DUI offenders.

Jake Jones has just died of a rare childhood cancer. His parents, Bob and Sally, watched over him the past year as the disease drained life and resources. Now, without their son and any personal assets, they plow headlong into the non-profit world, starting a memorial foundation to assist their family financially and to create exposure for more research into the specific cancer that took Jake’s young life.

Nancy Brown was a single mother to Alison, her twelve year old daughter who adored her and ballet. After a desperate two month search, Alison’s body was found in a muddy ditch, the victim of a pedophile abduction, abuse and murder. Internet records show that he had stalked her online. Nancy, horrified that such things could happen through the computer sitting in her living room, begins a nationwide appeal to raise awareness of the dangers of Internet chat rooms.

We have all heard similar stories, haven’t we? Parents who are propelled by loss to vocally and fervently battle the factors that took the lives of their children.

But would Nancy Brown, the Smiths and the Jones have done anything if tragedy hadn’t touched their lives? Would they have instead remained comfortable and apathetic if death hadn’t knocked on their doors and shook their worlds? Would they have even given a second thought to drunk drivers, cancer and Internet predators...or would they have just gone about their contented lives and concluded that it was "somebody else’s problem"?

I used to think this way. I say it to my own shame. Yes, an element of it is true and perhaps resonated with you. We live in a listless, indifferent, selfish world. As such, many ‘causes’ are only championed by those that have been affected personally. They expect other people to immediately understand, own it, and jump on the bandwagon when they, themselves, refused to listen beforehand. They were deaf to the cries until the pain was their own.

But...God allowed something to happen and now they hear...and serve.

I love the way that C.S. Lewis so eloquently and succinctly put it, "Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world." This is just as true for individual tragedies as it is for natural disasters or gross perversions that affect thousands. As lives are racked by pain, people are pressed into action and the world is touched as a result. These aren’t just temporal ripples. In many instances, waves wash through eternity.

Our Sovereign Lord, in His providential wisdom, sees that people are fully engaged because of, and in spite of, the calamities and catastrophes that have befallen them.

Nobody would have expected Nancy Brown, and the Smith and Jones families to have previously cared about all those issues – reckless drunks, cancer and pedophiles. There are simply too many causes in the world, too many hurts and injustices, to expect any one person or family to have a heart, understanding and involvement in all of them. Through circumstances and intervention, people are given specific wirings for specific calls upon their lives.

It is not fair, therefore, to judge the prior apathy of the individuals mentioned above. The flashpoint event should be acknowledged and the response should be applauded as these people have been compelled and propelled into action. In a lost and hurting world, any and all action should be commended, provided necessary education and preparation has occurred beforehand. Obviously, the discussion as to whether the context is Christ-centered or not comes into play, and is all-important, but we’ll leave that for another conversation.

There is certainly a distinction between personal causes and shared causes. There are some things that are so huge, so universal, that they absolutely require the mindshare and hands of every person on the planet. These are the things that whole generations will have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, either as believers or as unbelievers, and give an account by answering the question, "What did you do about it?" These are the matters that have everything else wrapped up into them – including disease, abuse, poverty, prostitution, drugs, conflict – and are the ‘mega-issues’ that encompass and feed so many of these ‘sub-issues.’

We were created to have relationship...relationship with God and relationship with each other. We are bound together in degrees, regardless of whether we are children of God or children of this world. The things that touch so many of us, touch all of us. The things that affect our world so greatly, should affect each of us individually. As humanity is tested and tormented, we are responsible to take up our part of the struggle.

The mega-issues of our world are all related to the fall and corruption of that same world. Ultimately, it’s all about sin, but the concerns and afflictions manifest in different ways.

What are the mega-issues of our world and generation? – HIV/ADS, Malaria, gross poverty, violent religious radicalism, and the devaluation of women. They all cause, are part of, and envelope, a standalone issue that represents the single greatest burden (and opportunity) of our time – orphaned and abandoned children. Children in the hundreds of millions. Children of disease, abuse and poverty. Children of hopelessness. Children of promise.

Jesus proclaimed that, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." He also indignantly said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." There are multitudes of times in Scripture where it is clearly revealed that God has a very special heart of compassion for the poor and for the children. How about those that are poor and children? What do you imagine He thinks of them? What do you think His attitude is towards destitute children, children that truly represent the "least of these"?

Over forty times in Scripture, God speaks of His love for orphans. The fact that God gave His son for us, as spiritual orphans, in order to place us into His family, is startling evidence of His burning passion for those who are cut off and removed from love and belonging. How much more does the poor temporal orphan here on earth represent His heart of hearts, the core of His compassion, the ‘sweet spot’ of His sacrifice.

No matter how you are wired or have been touched by personal tragedy, to rescue and look after orphans embraces a multitude of specific passions. Expressed, specialized and focused purpose does indeed reside there.

Do you desire to assist the poor and crush poverty? – Rescue orphans.

Do you wish to combat HIV/AIDS and other heinous diseases? – Rescue orphans.

Do you hope to prevent pedophiles from abusing young children? – Rescue orphans.

Do you want to stamp out prostitution? – Rescue orphans.

Do you yearn for the end of drug dealing and addiction? – Rescue orphans.

Do you crave to uphold the worth and significance of women? – Rescue orphans.

Do you long to stop violent extremism and the placement of children into radical schools? – Rescue orphans.

Do you dream to crush illiteracy? – Rescue orphans.

Do you aspire to eliminate child labor? – Rescue orphans.

Do you seek to eradicate the recruitment of child soldiers and atrocities they are forced to commit? – Rescue orphans.

All these things are targeted, attacked and addressed as you help to rescue orphans from their circumstances, abuses, exploitations and vulnerabilities. The 150 million abandoned and orphaned children of the world are directly related to, involved in, and susceptible to desperate poverty, female degradation, illiteracy, disease, sexual maltreatment, prostitution, unfair child labor practices, drug peddling, and all manner of petty crime and addictions. They also provide fertile ground to be developed and stolen into extremism, slavery, and war.

To address the orphan problem is to address a whole host of societal plagues. However a person is wired for specific activism, their goals and needs are met in the faces of orphaned and abandoned children.

Addictions. Disease. Predators. The Smiths. The Jones. The Browns. All are related in the fields of the fatherless. All can work in concert by tackling the core mega-issue of our time, the core heart-breaker of Our Lord and Savior – orphaned and abandoned children.

Do you want to change your world? – Rescue orphans.

Orphans of Suicide

This week, four years ago, on a cold and snowy night in Dallas...my mother took her own life.

Death brings much grieving and the combination of happy and sad reflections on past memories. The deepest gaping hole, though, is the one left when considering the loss of future memories – not having mom there to see the birth of my third child, mom missing out on family holiday celebrations...and much more.

This sense of deficit is further expounded upon when you try to constantly come to grips with the "Why?" of it all. "Didn’t she care about us enough to stick around?"

Abandoned children and the children of suicides are deeply affected by that one simple question that sums up a whole existence for them – "Why?" Naturally, they tend to blame themselves by thinking that they somehow weren’t worthy enough; that they didn’t make their parents happy enough.

(Image: Sylvia Margaret Myhill as a child on an English beach)

There is a heartbreaking culture of suicide in India. Perhaps it is partly related to many of them believing in the next life of reincarnation and the hope that they would be reinserted into the life wheel with a better set of earthly circumstances. Perhaps it is also related to the huge movie-making machine in Mumbai that so frequently features star-crossed lovers, unable to marry due to arranged marriage covenants, who end up following each other into death instead. It’s a dramatized romantic tragedy that plays out in the form of countless numbers of couples killing themselves in India each year.

Whatever the reason...daily reports of suicides are the reality in any city, town or village in India.

Upon visiting one of our church-based orphan homes outside of Hyderabad in the state of Andhra Pradesh seven months ago, I was greeted by fifteen or so children. I asked the question of the caregiver families as to how the children had become orphans. I was confident that I already knew the answer – HIV/AIDS, water-borne illnesses, accidents, and abandonment due to extreme poverty.

"Suicide and alcohol," was the softly-spoken reply.

"You’ve got to be kidding?" was my not-so-sensitive response.

Alcohol stands alone as the secondary reason for the orphan population in this particular home, but it is also the means to carry out the very act of suicide. Distraught farmers will literally drink themselves to death, consuming liter after liter until they lose consciousness. Their bodily functions then start shutting down in response to the alcohol poisoning that quickly courses through their veins and organs.

Not a pretty way to go.

(Image: Paul & Scott with the children of suicides, Hyderabad, India, 2006)

According to official published statistics, the two-state region of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in South India has alone seen over 16,000 suicides by farmers in the past five or six years. The true numbers are probably far greater than that.

Between 2000 and 2003, Andhra Pradesh was reeling under severe drought conditions. Micro-finance companies stepped in and provided a great help to many people, lifting them out of dire straits and giving them hope. However, several unethical operators also sprung into action to take advantage of the situation. Unable to make repayments, and under great pressures and harassment to do so, farmers began taking their lives in order to avoid the debt trap that had viciously ensnared them. Orphans remained.

The State stepped in with a bold plan to help the relatives of the troubled farmers who had ended their own lives. They granted free electricity and a one-time financial assistance package to these families.

It had the opposite effect.

In the hopes of getting the relief package for their struggling families, thousands of more desperate farmers committed suicide at the alarming rate of ten to twenty suicides per day in Andhra Pradesh alone. Some of the widows immediately threw themselves onto the funeral pyres of their dead husbands, preferring to join them in death than to face a world without their support and companionship. Orphans remained.

Unfortunately, many of the grieving widows left behind ended up remarrying and, as is so often the case in countries like India, the new husband didn’t wish to raise the children of the former husband. Other widows simply couldn’t cope and either ended up abandoning the children. Later, many took their own lives also. Orphans remained.

Before me stood the reality of the aftermath of alcohol, suicide, remarriage patterns, and poverty-driven abandonment. Sweet little faces without their family of origin. But...never-the-less...sweet faces huddled together as a new family with love, hope and joy, taken in by a church that stood ready to provide the emotional, physical and spiritual care for children who had already seen and endured much pain, loss and guilt.

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." (Psalm.147:3)

(Image: Hyderabad church-based orphan home. Taking in the children left behind after parental suicide.)