What are we waiting for?

A passionate, convicting plea from a Children's Cup worker in Swaziland (with my response at the bottom):

What Will it Take in 2008?

A buoyant great joy and an unspeakable sorrow both sweep through my soul as I remember 2007.

Children’s Cup grew to double the number of CarePoints and the number of children we care for (about 7000 now) whose lives we have seen Jesus change.

But how quickly other scenes ambush my heart as I look at the ones still waiting for our help.

I can tell you how it feels to watch a sobbing child’s body shut down with AIDS.

I have heard dying mothers plead for someone to care for the children she will leave behind.

I have watched orphaned children—in one case a 6 year-old girl—become the sole protector and breadwinner for her younger siblings.

I know of dozens of unwanted and unnamed toddlers who were handed off to village men to be sold for sex. If the children wanted even a morsel of food they would have to do whatever the man wanted.

I can tell you the problem is growing faster than we have the funds to respond.

I can tell you that the twin destroyers named AIDS and Hunger are measuring and defining the church—the Body of Christ—as they gallop in unrestrained apocalypse destroying families and nations.

But I can not tell you why or how so many of my fellow believers who call upon the name of Jesus for their own needs refuse to respond to the needs of a dying generation.

What can be said or done in 2008 to reach past indifference and ignite the hearts of God’s church?

The power of geography is unfathomable to me. I happened to be born here in America, with every resource available for me to grow up healthy and strong. Too many children are not so lucky.

The thing is, I know that if a child knocked at my door, if their parents had died and they needed a safe place to stay, I wouldn't hesitate to take them in. But when our doors are too far away for their little hands to reach, what then, shall we do?

What will I do? Go take care of orphans myself? Stay and send them money? Look for American children in need to take in? I don't have THE answer yet, but I believe it's coming, and as I wait, I do what I can.



Me & my little friend at the ABC ministry orphanage in Swaziland