More than 300 million people in the Sub-Saharan Africa make less than $1 a day. This number is expected to rise to 400 million by 2015 (The World Bank).
\nEvery year Sub-Saharan Africa spends $14.5 billion dollars repaying debt to the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s richest countries and international institutions. Nigeria debt payments are 11 times higher than the national health budget (IMF).
\n6,500 people are dying of AIDS each day in Africa, and another 9,500 contract the HIV virus. 1,400 of those contract the disease during childbirth or by their mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s milk. Africa is home to 30 million or 70-percent of the global AIDS infections (UNAIDS).
\nAIDS is a preventable and treatable disease. With proper training and involvement, Uganda has reduced its rate of infection from 15-percent to 5-percent (USAID).
\n4.1 million African AIDS patients are in need of anti-retroviral drugs that allow patients to restore their health and help them to continue living a productive life, caring for their families. Of these 4.1 million, only and estimated 50,000 will receive them (WHO).
\nLast year during his State of the Union Address, President George Bush committed the United States to sending more aid to Africa to help fight and prevent the spread of AIDS, yet the majority of the money has been caught up in red tape.
\nAnd while 6,500 people die each day — we simply step back and say it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not my problem.
\nHow have we come to a point where we place so little value on human life?
\nSince 1973, 43 million babies have been innocently killed in the name of choice.
\nRulers and dictators around the world have killed millions and millions of people because they disagree with their race or religion.
\nYet I continue to read e-mails from people complaining about a war that was fought to protect the rights and lives of the citizens of Iraq.
\nDo we really value human life, or just the lives of those close to us?
\nWhen congressional leaders can argue passionately that the horrendous procedure of partial-birth abortion is an American right, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lost the value and sanctity of human life. And it shows in more ways than one.
\nKing Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:18-21, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I said to myself regarding the human race, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGod’s testing the lot of us, showing us up as nothing but animals.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Humans and animals come to the same end — humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there’s really no advantage in being human. None. Everything’s smoke. We all end up in the same place–we all came from dust, we all end up as dust. Nobody knows for sure that the human spirit rises to heaven or that the animal spirit sinks into the earth.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nSolomon is saying that without revelation from God, we are no different than the animals.
\nEverything\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s smoke. From dust we come and to dust we go.
\nAt first glance it sounds like Solomon could have been the first animal rights activists. After all isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that what they all want?
\nThey want animals elevated to a status equal or higher than that of mankind, while at the same time they reduce the value of human life to nothing more than something that can easily be tossed aside in a time of inconvenience.
\nI was astonished Tuesday night as I watched the O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Reilly Factor and heard author Alexander Sanger (“Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century”) tell O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Reilly that our government should protect the right of a mother to kill her baby as long as it was still attached by the umbilical cord.
\nThe value of life has been cheapened and reduced to something that can be tossed in the nearest trash can at our convenience.
\nGenesis 1:27 says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThis scripture entails all of humanity.
\nFrom the living fetus at conception, to the orphan children in Africa, to the aging saints living in a retirement home, we are all created in the image of God.
\nThe Psalmist writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nHuman life is priceless.
\nYet our society continues to put a price tag on it.
\nIf a birth is inconvenient, or if saving a life will raise my taxes, or if I have to make a donation – it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not my problem to take care of.
\nHow can we continue to ignore the value of life?
\nWe all want a good life for ourselves, our families and those we love — yet we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to take the time to give value and help to a mother of three, dying of AIDS in another country.
\nThere is so much we can be doing to show our fellow man that we do care and that we will come to their aid.
\nBut before we can do that, we must each look at our own lives and see how much we really value life.
\nAnd I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be the first to admit that sometimes I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just as guilty as the next person when it comes to loving my neighbor.
\nSo during this month recognizing the Sanctity of Life let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ask ourselves:
\nDo we care for the poor orphans in Iraq, Africa or Ukraine?
\nDo we care about the homeless seeking shelter and warmth under a highway overpass?
\nDo we care about the poor in our community who need a helping hand just to make it week to week?
\nDo we care about the unborn children who have no one to protect them or watch over their rights?
\nOr are we too busy to care and love anyone but our friends, families and ourselves?
\nI hope that for each of us, the latter is not the case.
\nIn closing I leave you with a statement from United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.
\n“AIDS is not only sapping their (Africa’s) today, it is stealing their tomorrow. And it is threatening democracy, prosperity and security all around the world. None of us can afford to look the other way and pretend that the AIDS crisis is somebody else’s concern or that it isn’t a crisis at all. It affects us all. All of us are vulnerable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
Get involved: www.data.org<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than 300 million people in the Sub-Saharan Africa make less than $1 a day. This number is expected to rise to 400 million by 2015 (The World Bank). Every year Sub-Saharan Africa spends $14.5 billion dollars repaying debt to the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s richest countries and international institutions. Nigeria debt payments are 11 times higher than … Continue reading Sanctity of Life<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2090],"tags":[2088,2089,2092],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns-reflections","tag-belton-journal","tag-columns","tag-newspaper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10652,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/10652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}