Please spare some thoughts and prayers right now for Kenya, especially the people at the heart of the conflict in Nairobi. You can read about the crisis online from a humanitarian perspective here. you can find bloggers perspectives on the human impact and what will make a difference at allafrica.com.

Our world is full of despair and hopelessness on so many levels. We are barely competent or responsive to the issues. Darfur is suffering, Sierra Leone is still broken, Liberia corrupt, Uganda held at the mercy of madmen. East Timor, Fiji.. so many places that are full of horror. My heart is breaking for Kenya and all these places. Please spare some time in your thoughts and prayers.

Where this unleashes, there are children who become readers and authors of war. Who obliterate one another with the violence of abuse, abandonment and tragedy. There are orphans of war, famine and disease piling up and we must take note of the voice calling out. If nothing else, cry out for our brothers and sisters and children of injustice in this earth.

Inkling
I have always wrestled with the idea of spending tens of thousands on IVF treatments for couples that can’t have children. I can completely relate to the biological desire to create life but my heart breaks for orphans – for the unloved. The words of Hosea, that name children Desolate – and then see them renamed.. I love the picture of redeeming the children of this world that have been left on the side of the road. Especially in recent months when health issues have given me scope to really address the possibility of adoption in my future, recent conversations with other Jesus-followers about the potential joy of bringing the unloved into a home of love… and then listening to the story Mike Pilavachi told of someone in his community who is moving to Africa to become mum to a tribe of orphans, eight in total. There is an inkling of this in my future, and I don’t want to lose it – a heart for the child that is unloved. To redeem something beautiful that God made in the midst of humanity, where humanity abandoned them. Yes – that would be a good way to spend my love on this earth.