Three Day Vigil to Raise Famine Awareness
This past August a group of concerned people gathered for a three day Prayer Vigil to call attention to the plight of our sisters and brothers who are enduring the devastating famine that afflicts East Africa. The Vigil included prayer, fasting and an appeal to local media and residents to consider the terrible plight of the people starving to death in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Those who kept vigil over-night greeted each new day with prayer and labored to impress upon the local community the urgency of the need for emergency aide for East Africa.
We were grateful for the generous response of friends and strangers who joined us for the Vigil and realized that in every way our neighbors in East Africa are indeed family. Two months later as we look to the early days of November the famine has increased in its severity even as it has by and large disappeared from the headlines of the media. So it is that our Famine Vigil grows into new expressions that reach out to the hearts of neighbors across the valley and beyond. As the holiday shopping season bears down on us we experience a moral imperative to keep the starving children children of East Africa who are now perishing from starvation at a rate of one every six minutes uppermost in our hearts and minds.
What began with our Vigil a couple of months ago has become a mission that is more urgent than ever. As we enter a season in our country that is steeped in materialism and consumerism let us all step back and ask what our responsibilities are to neighbors who are starving to death - "on our watch"! To vigil with or to rally around is to walk with and stand behind the family that God has gifted us with. The people of East Africa come from a storied civilization and have shared beauty and wisdom and dignity with neighbors through the centuries. Now that they are deprived of their fair share of the bounty of God's creation we can transform our own lives, our celebrations of faith and business as usual by embracing our neighbors, walking with them and putting them at the center of our prayer and our lives. As the new born babes of East Africa face the prospect of starvation, we remember the words of Gandhi said: " whatever we can do, we must do!".
We were grateful for the generous response of friends and strangers who joined us for the Vigil and realized that in every way our neighbors in East Africa are indeed family. Two months later as we look to the early days of November the famine has increased in its severity even as it has by and large disappeared from the headlines of the media. So it is that our Famine Vigil grows into new expressions that reach out to the hearts of neighbors across the valley and beyond. As the holiday shopping season bears down on us we experience a moral imperative to keep the starving children children of East Africa who are now perishing from starvation at a rate of one every six minutes uppermost in our hearts and minds.
What began with our Vigil a couple of months ago has become a mission that is more urgent than ever. As we enter a season in our country that is steeped in materialism and consumerism let us all step back and ask what our responsibilities are to neighbors who are starving to death - "on our watch"! To vigil with or to rally around is to walk with and stand behind the family that God has gifted us with. The people of East Africa come from a storied civilization and have shared beauty and wisdom and dignity with neighbors through the centuries. Now that they are deprived of their fair share of the bounty of God's creation we can transform our own lives, our celebrations of faith and business as usual by embracing our neighbors, walking with them and putting them at the center of our prayer and our lives. As the new born babes of East Africa face the prospect of starvation, we remember the words of Gandhi said: " whatever we can do, we must do!".
