Tom Davis is a buddy of mine who is on fire for the orphans of this world. There is much that I love about Tom, but what I love most is the way he is a passionate advocate for orphans. We get to partner together to care for hundreds of them around the world. Tom’s feeling for orphans comes from deep within his bones. Here’s what he just blogged after returning from Africa:
Seeing children suffer and die in the dirt, literally, is a very difficult thing. Their life or death comes from what we share with them from the crumbs on our table.
Our team visited eight orphans living all alone, no food, water, and little hope. Two of these orphans are crippled and sit in the dirt all day. The widow who was taking care of them just passed away two weeks ago, now it’s just the children.
Nobody should have to die because they don’t have enough food to eat. To quote Bono, “Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.”
Today, a little girl named Lilly, like my Lilly, dies on a mat in a dirt floor with flies all over her face and insect eggs in a small bowl of water sitting next to her.
Nobody should ever have to die from AIDS alone, ashamed, and in hiding in a shanty town room that’s over 100 degrees.
Children should never have to grow up at 4 years old or be forced to have sex in order to eat.
A baby born with the AIDS virus ought to have had the chance to be AIDS free from a $5 medication.
Jesus is the starving, He is Lilly, He is the man dying of AIDS, He is the child, He is the baby.
As I think about my poverty today, my heart is full with the real poverty my friends in Africa deal with on a daily basis. Lord have mercy.
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I love Tom as well.
As mother Teresa would say it’s “feeding the hungry Jesus”. Jesus is all around us and he’s hungry, thirsty, alone, naked and cold.
I’m also continually convicted of the golden rule on this issue. How would we want to be treated if we were in those orphans shoes? How would we want the American Christian to react? What would we do for our own children if they experienced serious hunger pains! We’d do everything in our might to feed them.