I found this article from Faith Today through Jordon Cooper’s site and his quoting from Karen Neudorf at Beyond Magazine on the issue of AIDS. Aids is one of the huge health issues facing the continent of Africa. And it is only one of several equally huge health problems. Tuberculosis, malaria, sleeping sickness, diarrhea, and malnutrition are some of them. They have no moral stigma attached but we haven’t done much to eliminate them either.
The problems are far away and we have more pressing problems close to home. Like how to fund raise for our kids activities, how to afford this years Christmas presents, maybe we need the latest electonic gadget. Maybe it’s just that we need to maintain our homes and cars. It’s not that we don’t have legitimate needs either. It’s just that the problems are not right in front of our eyes attached to people we have learned to love. So we often put frivolous wants of our own ahead of the needs of people who need help to simply live.
The article says “Last year World Vision Canada advertised widely for a day-long seminar designed to help churches develop an effective ministering presence in the AIDS crisis. World Vision would take the seminar directly to the congregations. No one signed up. ” I am not sure how it was advertized, but I did not hear of it. And I get material regularly from World Vision. Maybe it was not offered to small remote places like Prince Albert or maybe it was just one of the many things that we missed in going through the mail.
Ministering to AID’s sufferers in our community is being done by mambers of our congregation but not as an official work of the “church”. I know that care and compassion comes through during the care given from stories overheard. Does this make the service provided less of a ministering service? I don’t think so. In fact those being cared for may attribute the care more to God than if it were provided as an arm of ministry of an organized church.
However, reaching out and attempting to effectively touch some of the vast problems that exist in Africa is a task better taken on by a larger group than an individual. It does require an enormous amount of money and technical assistance to treat AID’s sufferers in the numbers that exist in Africa. And this problem can’t be addressed alone without addessing the other less glamorous illnesses or issues such as education. The church of Jesus Christ could do a lot better than it has done in the past few years.
I think the amount of conflict in Africa has frightened us away and has given us an excuse to do nothing. We haven’t intervened in the conflicts and we are not doing well at providing assistance to the local people who have remained in their own countries battlling enormous odds as they have attempted to maintain some kind of health care system. And what are we willing to do for the generation of young people who have lost their chance to receive an education or alternatively have only been educated in the ways of war and hate.
I guess we have reason to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the problems in Africa. We just don’t have the right to ignore our brothers and sisters and their children in need.
Our congregation is sending one of our young men to Africa to work with a doctor there who chose to stay and work with his own people throughout the conflict in his country. I wonder if our congregation will catch the vision and raise the funds he needs in order to go?
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