Over the years, and recently, I have not noticed something, even when it happened very close by. Then yesterday it happened again, and as the event wound down, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
We all have our various churches, ministries, denominations etc, and I’m not attacking any particular branch but…. Locally we had a 2 year old child abducted from a church nursery. The child was found safe today and the responsible people arrested.
This was a all night, news worthy, social media talking event. However, as the event ended, I went Facebook searching at local churches, professing individuals, and even a few preachers that I know on FB. The result? Not a single one mentioned this missing child. Not one.
As bastions and examples of helping our communities, what better example of exhibiting this help, would it be, to take a few seconds and at least pass along the information concerning this child? What, maybe 10-15 seconds to post it on FB and say anything concerning this abducted child? Is your time so short that you could not do that? Was it because this child wasn’t a member of your particular denomination? Etc etc.
As this entered my mind, it also hit me that this has occurred many times in the past with missing or even abducted children. Silence from the very place that has mass communication at its finger tips, emails, text messages, phones apps, to reach members of their congregations. We can and must do better than this.
Folks, as Christians we help the weak, champion the oppressed etc. What weaker, more oppressed is a 2 years old missing child? Is this type of behavior also a national thing? Do churches in your areas alert you to missing kids, even outside your own denomination?
As I mentioned, we have to do better than this. Maybe it is along the same topic as abortion and just not worth mentioning on Sundays or any other days. It does tend to rub the flock the wrong ways these days, doesn’t it.
One last time. We need to be better than this!