We recently had a leak in our bathroom (and it happened when I was traveling which made it worse). Looking for steal-deals on Cyber Monday to help repair the damage got me thinking. (That happens occasionally -- the thinking, I mean.)
Homelessness is on a drastic increase in America and the homeless need our help. Read about a ministry and a man who are making a major difference for the homeless in my latest article in The Examiner here.
And if you want to know how to help children in at-risk situations, read my previous post.
* Pray for orphans and underprivileged children. (Join the Orphans First Prayer Chain.) * Support a needy child or orphan ministry. * Adopt or foster. * Volunteer to help a foster or adoptive family. Provide respite care. * Mentor a fatherless youth or become a court appointed advocate for him/her. * Help homeless children. * Sew dresses or britches for poor children.
We can make a difference in some way -- be it big or small.
Orphan Sunday was designed to help people learn how to make a difference. Read about our Orphan Sunday event here in my latest Examiner article. And read about the diverse ways people are making a difference -- and how you can too.
For parents, the whole Halloween-everyone's-doing-it attitude can present a dilemma. But it doesn't have to be. It all depends how you look at it. And what you do with what's available to you.
58: The Film -- A disturbing yet compelling film on poverty. 58: The Film portrays one of life’s most destructive forces—poverty.
Poverty destroys lives and hope. It can cause poor health, malnutrition, illiteracy, despair . . . Yet all the Christians in the USA alone have the ability to eradicate poverty by sharing their lives and their resources as stipulated in Isaiah 58—the inspiration behind the film’s title: “If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness…” (Isaiah 58:11).
The film highlights families and individuals caught in poverty and forced to make drastic choices that cost their freedom. Some of them have to work day and night to provide for their families. Yet the children go to sleep hungry.
Some families find themselves caught in an endless cycle of debt and enslavement. They take out a loan to survive, then they are forced to work in illegal quarries or other precarious situations Just to pay back the interest of the loan, with no hopes of ever paying off the principal. They then pass the burden onto their families who are also enslaved.
Some of the profiles are haunting. A little boy enslaved, his face darkened, and without hope. A woman who, since being been enslaved, lives a nightmare; she knows no happiness. A mother struggles to feed her children who cry at night because they’re hungry. They sleep crammed in a dilapidated one-room shack surrounded by sewage.
Children trapped into sex slavery are also portrayed, and so is their rescuer—a man who gave up personal comfort to risk his life for the cause of justice.
The bottom line: Live Isaiah 58. Find the hard things God calls you to do and do them. Put your own problems aside and fight for someone else. It cost you something but you’ll find yourself very close to the heart of God.
58: The Film will be in theaters mid October. Don’t miss it. It will change your life -- and the lives of impoverished children.
It will be interesting to see what the end of this day brings as the dust settles on the trail of Obama's first visit to San Diego. Fundraising, of course. And not without plenty of opposition.
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