Its blogger month at Compassion International, and a group of bloggers are banding together to raise awareness of children in need. The goal is to get 3,108 additional children sponsored this month. You can read more about sponsoring a child in a previous post I wrote (“Sponsor a Child through Compassion”). Each week Compassion is giving the bloggers an assignment or “theme” about which to blog. This week the challenge is to write a letter to God about child sponsorship. Not being quite certain how to go about this, I just began to pour out my heart to God concerning this topic. Below are the words that spilled out as I talked to God about the issue.
Father, there is such a need in our world to help children who are hurting. I confess in the protected bubble in which I live, I cannot truly appreciate the horrors these kids face every day. I have food and clean water at my fingertips. Many of them have neither. I have a closet full of clothing – some of which I never wear – while most of these children have only what they are wearing right now. I’ve seen poverty in other countries and homelessness in my own. But Lord, these are children. They didn’t choose to be born and they certainly did not choose to live in the conditions in which they find themselves. Still, this is their lot in life. Why was I spared a similar fate? Why am I so richly blessed while they have so little? It doesn’t make sense.
I must go beyond being grateful for my own situation. I must do something about their conditions and needs. Perhaps the reason I have been blessed is so that I might help others. You have allotted me money and resources to manage for Your Kingdom; help me to be a wise steward and to care for the needs of children in far off lands out of that which you have given to me.
When You walked among us, you invited the children to come to You. You delighted in their presence, even telling us that the Kingdom of Heaven belonged to them. We cannot ignore the plight of children who are sick, hungry, and wounded. We must not pass them by. It’s so easy to change the channel when their images come on the TV. It’s so easy to click away from web sites that detail their desperation. Truthfully Lord, it’s easy to forget their pain as I go about the busyness of my own life.
Break my heart for every child in need. Teach me to love them the way you do. Show me what I can do to help. Use me to encourage others to do the same. Lord, let us not let this moment in history pass without righting this injustice and eliminating hunger and poverty from our world. Give us the courage and wisdom to care for the needs of each and every child on this planet, and may we do it in Your name and with Your love.
Don’t let any who profess to follow You rest easily until they have done something to care for those who are so precious in Your sight. Thank You for the work of those at Compassion and everyone else who is faithfully serving children in need. Bless their work and multiply their efforts for the sake of Your Kingdom and Your glory.
Your child,
Tim