Be a Hero

I’ve been on a blogging hiatus, but I’m back!  Did you miss me?  I missed you.

Just a warning – This is a long post.  Hang with me to the end. 

I recently watched the Pixar movie, Meet the Robinsons and cried at the first scene.  I also cried at the beginning of one of the Harry Potter movies.  What did these movies have in common?  Both of them depicted a scene in which a baby is left on doorsteps.  Why does this strike a chord in me?  Because I was left on doorsteps.  I don’t talk about it much, not because it is painful but because God has healed that area in my heart.  I was adopted by two amazing parents who took me in as their own.  I consider them my parents.  Not my adopted parents.  Apart from Jesus and my husband, they are the great heros of my life.  I truthfully do not know where I would be today if they hadn’t adopted me to be theirs.

Why am I talking about this?

February is blog month at Compassion International.  This is an organization that rescues children from poverty in Jesus’ name.  The organization has sent 15 popular bloggers to Uganda (I can’t believe they didn’t ask me!) to minister to the Ugandan people and blog about their experiences.  (These bloggers have thousands of readers.  I think maybe I have ten.)  You can see the list of bloggers and find their links here.  The goal is to spread the love of Christ and ultimately to change the lives of children by sharing about their need.

I have often thought about all the bad things in the world that occur.  Why some children are born into wealth and others are born literally on dirt floors.  Why some people are allowed to have the resources to spend thousands of dollars on a vacation and others don’t even have running water.  It’s overwhelming to me, at times, when I think about the needs of the world.  What can one person do?  The problems seem too big to even be addressed.  Yet, one sponsorship with Compassion International can change the life of one child.  It may not seem like that much.  But it is to that one child.

I recently read that Uganda has the largest orphan population in the world.  Approximately 1.6 million orphans.  The city of Dallas has an estimated population of 1.2 million people according to the 2003 census.  Please let that sink in.  I know it probably sounds like a commercial.  I’m really not trying to be melodramatic.  I’m not trying to manipulate your emotions.  These are the facts.  And we can do something about it.  We can change the life of a child. 
Forever.

Be a hero today.  For all of the children left on doorsteps, life still awaits. 

---