Today

Today is World AIDS Day. A day to be reminded of the severity and
emergency of a virus that has taken the lives of so many across this
earth. A virus that, 20 years ago was an unknown, misunderstood and
frightening invasion upon humanity.

While I have been acutely aware of the suffering experienced by
millions across this globe, especially in Africa, I did not know until
this week that it had also affected my own family.
Over 20 years ago, my 11 month old sister Jessica, had died from a
heart failure. I just found out that after Jessica had died, my
parents received a letter to say that she had been given HIV positive
blood during a surgery. At the time, they had no idea what this virus
was really about, but they knew that had the heart been fixed, she
would have died anyway because of the unclean blood. If it is not
enough to hate the disease for what it has done to friends across the
world, it had also hit my own family.

As I continue to try to make sense of the complexity of poverty and
AIDS, I continue to realize how much we need a merciful God to shower
His grace and healing upon a broken world, and especially a hurting
and neglected continent.

I wonder what it is that God calls us to? I wonder how He wishes for
us to respond? I have the feeling He's waiting for us to be the agents
of His grace and healing. I have the feeling He's waiting for us to
identify ourselves as brethren with those who have been stigmatized,
ignored and left voiceless.

If I close my eyes, I am suddenly again in a South African hospital
ward with a beautiful dying child. I am seated in a mud-floor Kenyan
hut with a hungry family, hearing them sing to God. I am standing on a
narrow dusty road to a brilliant crimson African sunrise. The faces of
the orphan, the widow, the AIDS victim, the broken, and the lonely and
the hungry move their lips. If I turn off my iPod, even here in
America, I can hear their call, their labored breathing, their call
for human dignity, for hope, for a chance to live and to fulfill that
which God created them to be.

To stand by those who have been infected and affected by AIDS in
Africa, across the world, and in our own country, I ask that you take
some time today to pray for those you know, or don't know, who fight
harder each day to survive in the midst of tragic circumstances. As I
pray that God will redeem the brokenness and heal the sick, I also
pray that He would change us - that we would hear His call to be
faithful in prayer, in service, in love-fueled action, in the
extension of grace, and certainly in hope.

Be blessed today.

Jena