Blinders On

 

Proverbs 28:27, Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.

Proverbs 21:13, Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.

 

I have come to a new understanding about myself. These revelations are always good but often painful. This one is a call to action that I have no idea how to implement.

I just read a book by Kay Warren called “Dangerous Surrender.” Kay is the wife of Rick Warren of Saddleback Church. Her book tells of God’s intervention in the normal life of wife/Mom/Grandmother/local church ministry leader to international HIV/AIDS advocate. This transition was a process leading her to be more trusting of God and less available to family. It is an awesome telling of how God can change the life of a believer for His glory and the good of others.

By education and job history I am a social worker. It’s part of my nature to care about others. What I realized from this book is that I care from a distance. My hands are not soiled by the dirt of poverty or the blood of the sick. I even avoid movies like Hotel Rwanda or any movie that shows me a real situation that I can’t fix.

As I read this book and Kay Warren described her own trouble with seeing and dealing with poverty, sexual exploitation, and orphans left by HIV/AIDS and other serious, epidemic illnesses I realized how wrong it is to let these circumstances go without my notice. It’s even worse to deliberately avoid them by just changing the channel or letting my husband watch the “hard” movies by himself. I am hiding my eyes from what is day to day reality for many people in the world.

I cannot even imagine the pain of seeing thousands of African orphans homeless in the streets. I have read about sex slaves, last year in Phoenix, AZ, and at the end of September in my own city of Reading, PA. In her book Kay Warren speaks of five and six year old girls in Cambodia who are sold into a life of prostitution, unimaginable to me! Painful to read and to ponder what on earth I could ever do for them.

I feel a need to act. Prayer is my answer for now. I may be able to offer a few dollars here and there, not enough to solve any of these issues or even to remove one person for very long. What is a Christian to do? Only God knows so I will ask Him to direct my path to the place I can serve Him to do the most good for other people.

Ezekiel 16:49 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. What a horrible thought to find myself in a verse about Sodom.

The truth that the book pointed me to is that I do not have to go to Africa to find orphans or poverty. My own newspaper revealed to me that my own local area is dealing with sex slaves. (How scary is that?). Certainly there is HIV/AIDS right in my own county and plenty of people who are sick. They all need to see and hear about the love of Jesus Christ.

I recommend the book but like me, you may come away rethinking your “religion”. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27

Okay, blinders off.