Shooting Street Kids or Killing the Unborn--What's the Difference?

I can't even begin to express my shock, disappointment and utter disgust at our new president's restoration of funding for worldwide abortion. So much of that taxpaper money will end up in Africa, yet the very last thing Africa needs is free funding for abortion!

How many our president possibly think this is positive change? This is not the kind of change we wanted! In many countries the government simply sends out the police or the military to "clean up" the city by shooting street kids on sight. In other places they load them into huge trucks and then haul them out a distance from the city and dump them someplace where it is impossible for them to survive. How does our president's new order differ from that? Very little! Both deal with children who are unwanted--by someone. Get them out of sight, out of mind. Less strain on social services. A more attractive city for tourists. Mr. President, the human cost of your policy is astronomical.

I am not unfamiliar with the needs and problems of the poor. I have lived with the poor, laughed with them, cried with them, shared their concerns. How does it help them to pay for the killing of their children?

More black children will be eliminated than any other kind. Precious, beautiful black children whose only crime was their mother did not want them, or thought she didn't, in a moment of discouragement. No! No! A thousand times, No! Let the children of Africa live. Amongst them may be another Martin Luther King, Jr.

Please, Mr. President, you have begun your administration on an extremely destructive course, but course corrections are always permitted. No, you need a U turn. They are permitted, too.

Hungry children, naked children

I'm getting ready to lead a team to Uganda to put on a late Christmas for children at our adopted IDP camp. (IDP=Internally Displaced Persons) As I prepare, I am motivated by the needs I observed there last summer. Some of them came to our Day Camp completely naked. Clothes were considered a luxury their struggling parents could not afford. I saw children who were filthy and sick. But the saddest thing I saw occurred when one child spilled the plate of beans we had just served him for lunch. He hesitated for a moment, and while he did about five other children swooped in on the beans, scraping them off the ground and stuffing them into their mouths, sand and all. That's when I realized how hungry these children really were.

It was a privilege to have something to share with them for the five days of our Day Camp. As I thought about it afterwards, I realized that both feeding the hungry and clothing the naked were acts that Jesus considered done unto Him. What a privilege He gives us to have enough to be able to share with those in real need!