The Phil Files

You know if a culture values human life by the way it treats its children. That’s why Mother Teresa responded to a Newsweek Magazine question many years ago the way she did. She was asked what she thought about abortion in America. Her response was something close to this: “When a society kills its own children, what is there left to say?”

Jesus makes clear in Luke 18 that He not only loves children, but that he will also hold accountable those who keep them from Him or cause them to stumble. In addition, Luke has emphasized strongly the way Jesus wants us treat children and the poor for the last three chapters, Luke 16-18. So often, poverty keeps children from having a chance at anything … a healthy life, opportunity to thrive and succeed, and most of all, to find Jesus and a world-wide family of grace.

I had not expected or anticipated the powerful message of these chapters to coincide with my preparation to go to Uganda and my families’ opportunity to write the two children we support monthly through Compassion, Doreen and Estarlin (both pictured in the blog). God has a way of both confronting and confirming His call to us and I see this happening to me in these chapters. I hope you will be in prayer about what God is showing you in Luke 16-18, too.

//Inspiration: Luke 18:16
Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”

//Incarnation:
I must hear the call of Jesus to me and not wait for others to recognize His voice, for He may be calling them to some other act of kindness to the poor and the childre. But this I know, I must be faithful to His call on my heart!

//Invitation:
O Lord Jesus, please help me see how can help with the many who are wanting to know you, but don’t yet know it and may never have the chance because of their circumstances. In Jesus’ name. Amen.