Monday, February 12, 2007

Food for thought

I often read these posts and I do think it is a good idea that we pray for each other. I think it is good to ask for prayer. I have however been trying to focus on the bigger things in my personal prayer life. I have a horrible cold right now and although prayer is nice for that I will survive it any way and be none the worse off having built immunity to a new strain of the cold virus. So I have been thinking why is it that we as Christians often ask for prayer for trivial things? I am not pointing fingers I do it myself. And I often feel my prayer requests become selfish and self centered rather than looking at the big world I turn to my own small world and focus on it. Yes I believe that God listens to every prayer and that thank goodness He is big enough to listen and respond to them all. I however, am doing my yearly spiritual exploration as we are about to start the Lenten Season. I think of those 40 days in the desert and of how Christ may have spoken to his Father in heaven and what the conversations were like. I just think that I would want my conversation with God to look more like that. So this week my prayers have focused on a report I watched about a week ago on the sex trade in Asia. It focused mostly on Cambodia but the girls were from surrounding countries including my daughter’s home country Vietnam. It saddens me to think of people buying little girls for sex. I think God wants me to get angry about that and I have been angry in my prayer. I also have asked that God have mercy on the people that sale and buy sex from these beautiful little children. I pity them and pity the sickness that makes them commit these atrocities. I also pray that justice is handed out to them. I don't think that forgiveness comes without justice and that they should be punished for committing these horrible acts. I also pray for the safety of all of the children. I thought to myself that little girl could just as easily been my little girl. Why did she get to come home to a safe place with me while those girls will go onto lead the life that is handed to them by the hands of very sick and twisted individuals? I often have a hard time reconciling the dichotomy of the two situations the one of my daughter and the one of girls being sold or the dichotomy of those in VN who live in utter poverty while I enjoy the finer things of life. Then I have said what else can I do to help? Right now I don't know that answer. To do that we would have to fix the problem of poverty in Asia, which is what drives this industry. We can start by lobbying our government to strongly prosecute Americans that go there to buy sex from children and send a clear message that we will not tolerate persons using any child of God in that fashion. We can support orphanages to help keep the children in a safe environment and drive our monetary support of the orphanages to include certain things we won't tolerate like selling children. We can show our support by trying to buy only fair trade items to ensure as our large corporations get larger and richer that people in these Asian countries are not taken advantage by terrible working conditions and an unlivable wage. Just being American gives us power. Having money gives us power. And most importantly having Christ gives us power. We should be compelled by the great commandment to use that power and change the world not just the world around us. God is big enough and I wonder am I? I adopted my daughter to change my life and make my family. Falling in love with her people has compelled me that just changing my life is not enough. As you can tell I have thought about this alot. I wish to challenge you to look inside and open your eyes to a world of hurt this Lenten Season and to do something. I extend this challenge equally to myself. I have a shirt that says "you have one life do something" So please pray for every child I saw on TV being used as a commodity. Pray for all of the people in this world that truly hurt. I say praise to God that it was not my Sophie I saw on TV and I say thank you to God for all I have. Please, help me to be content with this and not want for more than my share because I already have more than my share.
Summer, Mom to Sophie