Suffer the little ones...

³⁶ He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷ “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

No doubt Jesus had a great love for children. Ar passage in Matthew describes the scene like this:

¹³ Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴ Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” ¹⁵ When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

Last week my friend, Sayeed Naseer, a Major in the Afghan National Army came to lunch. As a bonus, just for me, he brought his youngest daughter, an eleven year old princess named Satera (accent on the last "a"). It means "star" and fits her perfectly.

I am surrounded by kids in this city. They are out of school for the three months of winter instead of summer, but they desperately need to be there all year long. An entire generation of school-less Afghans are looking for a way to get by. They pick through garbage on the roadside in hopes to find something of value or even to eat. The sell trinkets and scarfs when mine are playing Xbox & PlayStation or enjoying a afternoon Blizzard from DQ.

Not sure what I can do. There is so much potential in them...so many future stars. Go find a "star" today...yours or someone else's. Hug them and pour into their lives just a little bit of wisdom and compassion. You never know what they will become.

Better Living Thru Chemicals

Think about the last time you had a headache, backache or any kind of small physical discomfort. Now many of you purists might go find a dark room, get into your favorite yoga position or start meditating on fields of dandelions. For others, it's quicker to dig through glove box, purse or even reaching out on the stand at the checkout at a local convenience store for the quick fix! Chemicals!!

There are not many families in America that do not have Vitamin M sitting at close proximity. I'm not talking about Folic Acid either. I'm talking about the real deal...Motrin! Check out the urban dictionary hyperlink above on this one. We all know the dangers of Motrin and Tylenol in great quantities, but oh the joys of the quick fix..."better living thru chemicals" as I have said for many years.

Last night I ran into an Afghan friend. A worker who makes a couple of hundred dollars a month...not a day or an hour...I said a month. "Cheery ye?" (where are you) he said with a smile, but I knew something was bothering him. He had been looking for me for a few days. He described in Pashto that he had a back ache that was really slowing him down and had nothing for it. As I walked back to my room and opened up my cabinet full of bags of medicine that I hope to never use here, I grabbed a bottle of Tylenol.

I thought about it long and hard, and read the warnings over and over that I give little thought to if I am consuming them myself. Now I am playing "over the counter" doctor in a strange land where this is not a common household product. I slowly recanted to him the dangers and told him exactly how many and how often to take the few pills I placed in his hand, wrapped up in a napkin. He knew what they were of course, and thanked me repeatedly.

As I laid down last night, I thought about how our lives are blessed in so many small ways. We have things that we no longer even recognize because we have never lived without them. We are truly blessed beyond measure and we don't stop to count. Our life expectancy is even affected by our rich blessings. This wiki source says we might live to be 78 here in the U.S.

Afghanistan has a staggering 43 year life expectancy! No, silly, it's not because of a lack of tylenol! It's a generation of war, lack of medical treatment, air quality and a whole host of things to discuss on another day. I'm just saying, we got it good, folks!

Now soak this in, and then go out and make it better for someone else today!