Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Psalm 82:3
Most Christians are aware that God wants us to take care of orphans. The Bible contains multiple commands like this one from Psalms, urging God’s people to act on behalf of the fatherless.
And thanks to advances in technology, we’re more aware of the desperate plight of orphans than ever before.
The thing is, this kind of awareness can be crippling at times. I don’t know about you, but the enormity of the problem makes me want to ignore it altogether. After all, what difference can one person make?
I’m at Intoxicated on Life today, sharing some practical ways you and I can fulfill God’s desire for His people to solve the orphan epidemic. Here’s an excerpt:
It has been said that there’s a worldwide orphan epidemic.
More than 143 million children are in orphanages, in foster care, or on the streets.
It’s not easy to talk about orphans, is it? And when I throw out a number like 143 million…well, that number is pretty much impossible to fathom. Even pointing out this very high number exceeds the entire population of Russia doesn’t help us really grasp it…
A problem this big can make us feel pretty helpless. And something about feeling helpless makes it easier to just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that we aren’t aware of such a huge problem. It feels nicer to stick our fingers in our ears and close our eyes and pretend that this enormous problem that we’re helpless to solve doesn’t exist.
But it does exist. So why should we care when it feels like there’s so little we can do?