THE RIGHTEOUS CARE

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

Proverbs 29:7

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

This Sunday is Compassion Sunday, a Sunday sponsored by the organization Compassion International (http://www.compassion.com) which advocates for the impoverished children of the world. Not everyone can go and do mission work to take effort directly to the points of need but that doesn’t mean you still can’t reach out and make a difference. Through child sponsorship, Compassion International presents the opportunity for us to change the story of a child somewhere in the world and give them a new lease on life. These children have names and faces. They don’t create their circumstances but are born into them and deserve to be justly treated and given the opportunity to have a future. Contributors to Compassion International’s cause do just that.

I can speak on this with confidence as my wife Grace and I have been child sponsors for as long as we have been together, which is more than 21 years now. We started small with one child but as we experienced the rich blessing of connecting with a child in a part of the world we may never get to go to and seeing how much of a difference we were making in their lives, we felt we had to do more. And so we sponsored another child, and then another, and another. Each time I would gain a promotion point during my military career, I felt it was an opportunity to share the blessing of my pay increase by helping yet another child in need. Today, that number has grown to twelve children, twelve children that we communicate with regularly, celebrate birthdays and other special occasions with via letters and electronic messages, and watch grow up to adulthood and bright futures. We have had many children we sponsored grow up and out of the program and we always were given a new child to love and help in place of them.

Through this experience, I know we’re blessing the children and their families because we hear it from them as they write us and tell us how the support is helping. They share that they are blessed but to be honest with you, Grace and I feel as blessed if not more through our sponsorship experiences. As I wrote in a devotion not long ago, we receive when we choose to give freely to make a difference in the lives of others, and particularly, in the lives of the poor and needy.

Today, verse from Proverbs was a timely word given the close proximity of Compassion Sunday and my church’s effort to do our part in helping meet the needs of children Jesus referred to as the least of these, children Jesus holds dear to His heart and we should likewise. Look at these words from the Lord, spoken through the writing of Solomon:

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. Proverbs 29:7

Face it. There are just some people who could care less about anyone but themselves. They are the cynical and skeptical, the ones who will come up with every excuse in the book to justify why they don’t feel compelled to help those in need. These are not the righteous but the wicked for scripture tells us that the righteous care about justice for the poor. They refuse to stand by idly and watch others suffer. They give and give freely because they understand that what they have is not really theirs but God’s and they ever seek to be good stewards of what He provides and use their resources to His glory. The wicked, self-centered in their life attitudes, only seek to glorify themselves and have no concern for others.

Friends, the word of God today speaks to us powerfully in regard to how Christians are to respond to the needs of the poor. We are to show caring and compassion in whatever way we can and one of those ways is to make a commitment to sponsor a child in need. Currently, Compassion International’s work has led to more than 1.3 million children being sponsored. In the last year alone, more than 125,000 people came to a relationship with Jesus through the ministry’s efforts.

Won’t you consider adding to that number this year by helping give an impoverished child a future?

For the righteous care about justice for the poor and no one showed that more than our Savior Jesus, the One who was, is, and will always be perfectly righteous. Let’s all follow His lead.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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