One Year

I think if I hadn't visited Save The Children, I wouldn't have realized that it's been a year since the floods in Pakistan.

Credit: Save The Children

A natural disaster that would have devestated more than 5 states has passed its one-year-anniversary with a whimper.  With so many people affected, why has it been so easily forgotten?

I think we know.  But if we are going to call ourselves Christians, we need to love and care for our enemies.  If we are to call ourselves humanitarians, we need to remember the children, mothers, fathers who were harmed.  If we are to say that we love the world, we must love ALL of it, not just the parts that are good to us.  Not every person wants to hurt us, but there will be some who do.  Should we allow many to suffer because of some?

I think we're asking that question now with the famine in the Horn of Africa.  I think it makes it harder, but we shouldn't look at those suffering and say, "Well, you did it to yourselves so...too bad."  It's easy to say that, but we just can't.

If you would like to know what Save The Children is doing in Pakistan, a link to their report is HERE.

What's The Difference?

When Haiti happened, the response was amazing. And heart warming! I took part in the Hope For Haiti telethon that actually started with George Clooney and MTV. Crazy, right?

So now I'm watching the videos of Pakistan and I've read that the need is big, people are saying even bigger than Haiti.

This is from the site How Big Really powered by the BBC:


You can change the center using this link: http://howbigreally.com/dimension/environmental_disasters/pakistan_floods

And I keep wondering...
Where are the celebrities?
Where are the telethons?

The comments I keep reading on CNN/MSNBC are disheartening.

I understand that Pakistan has harbored terrorists. I understand that there have been flag burnings there. And people have been murdered. Innocent people. But I look at those little children and think about how much they hurt.

I understand that the economy is bad. I don't blame my friends for not donating. It seems like everything has gone wrong this year, right? You've got Haiti and you've got the BP oil crisis and it just keeps coming. "Donor fatigue" as a friend of mine put it.

Maybe it's that. Maybe it's just all coming on the tail of so much disaster that we're tired of it. That we need a little sunshine in our lives.

I can understand that too.

Plus, it's hard to empathize with someone who is so far away. My mom always likes to tell the story of the alarm she felt when my sister (very, very young and a long time ago) had heard about a plane crash with no survivors. My sister said, 'Why should I care? I didn't know them.' (My mother feared for YEARS for my sister's compassion after that)

There's a quote that is very accurate for me:
Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed.
~ Jan de Hartog

Sorry. I'm not really going to wrap this up. It's almost time for work to end, I have a headache, I don't know how to wrap it up, really. There are my thoughts, splattered across a page.

If you are interested in donating through the PRIVATE SECTOR: http://www.oxfam.org/ , http://www.theirc.org/ or through the U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: http://www.state.gov/