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Why This Matters To God: The World's Waiting Children Matter
The numbers are staggering...More than 143 million orphans worldwide...every 14 seconds an AIDS death leaves another child orphaned...more than 800,000 children pass through America foster care system each year.
Yet, there is One who cares — our Father in heaven. Throughout the Bible, God shares his compassion, his love, and his special concern for the most vulnerable among us — the orphan. The world’s waiting children. Children with no father or mother to protect them, waiting for someone to care for them, someone to love them.
“Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan…”
— Zechariah 7:9-12
The Scriptures are clear that the Lord gives the family of God the responsibility to care for the orphan's needs — to love and protect them. In fact, God's concern for orphans is so central to his plan for us here on earth that he inspired James to write: "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world," (James 1:27)
Why would God tell us that caring for orphans is "pure and undefiled religion"?
Maybe it’s because the world sees God’s heart when he works through his people to help the helpless. And maybe it’s because caring for orphans is such a perfect picture of our relationship with God. In our inability to please God in our own efforts, in our utter helplessness to initiate a relationship with him, we are more like orphans and strangers than we like to admit.
It’s time for the body of Christ to step up. The urgent needs of orphans around the world are calling the Christian community today to a radical faith. One church, one family, one person can make a difference.
Today God is stirring the hearts of his people to this incredible need and opportunity. There is a movement of an increasing number of churches and evangelical organizations worldwide who are coming together as one voice to not only raise awareness but more importantly to mobilize the body of Christ to take action on behalf of the orphan.
“Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.”— Psalm 82:3-4