Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Have Mercy

Today is Blog Action Day, and I don't really even know what that means, but I gather it has something to do with motivating people to do something about poverty.

Two things:
a) I've been writing all day and I'm tapped out. I've got nothing motivational to say to you about combating poverty today, except that if you're a follower of Jesus you should be doing something about it. (And I suspect most of my readers are doing something already.)
b) If you're not inclined to help out, I seriously doubt a blog post will change your heart. Especially one as short and unmotivational as this one. :-) But, seriously, if you say you're a follower of Jesus and yet you're not interested in this aspect of Jesus' teachings, you got bigger problems than a blog post can solve.

Anyhoo.

I do some different things in this regard, with my family and with my church and with my own dang self, all of which are pretty simple, none of which make me some kind of awesome humanitarian along the lines of Mother Theresa or Angelina Jolie-Pitt, but the one thing I'd recommend to you, especially if you've got children, is sponsoring a child through Compassion International.

Believe the hype. Compassion is awesome. And what they do works and it works well.

My family has sponsored a little girl named Lorena from El Salvador for about six years, since about the time our oldest was 1. So we have literally seen Lorena grow up (in pictures). The best part is trading letters and photos, and our daughters now have a pen pal from a completely different walk of life in a completely different part of the world. We get to teach our kids about helping kids who don't have lots of money or stuff or opportunities, and Lorena gets an advantage socially, financially, educationally, and spiritually.

It costs about 5 trips to Starbucks a month (or something like that). Go for it.

3 comments:

Lynellen said...

Mother Theresa I get. She lived among the outcasts and untouchables.

But Angelina Jolie? What on earth does she DO to help poverty? Donating money from the sale of pictures of your kids just is NOT in the same league as Mother Theresa.

My parents have always sponsored kids through Compassion. Me...I'm not really doing anything about poverty right now. Seems to me that it's time to sponsor a kid.

Jared said...

Lynellen, the Angelina thing was a joke, contrasted with Mother Theresa despite the tabloid culture's treatment of Jolie as a saint.

Sorry it didn't come across.

Anonymous said...

this is a fantastic post, brother.