Category: Faith & Religion

Compassion in India

Last week I received an email from Compassion – “Please pray urgently for Compassion and the children of India”.

You may have heard of the situation going on in India – since April 2016, due to government regulations, the flow of funding from Compassion into India, has completely stopped. That’s now over 9 months where no funds have reached the 147,000 children that Compassion support in India. At this point in early 2017, funds are now drying up, and what’s worse, come 15 March 2017, if the situation has not changed, Compassion will be forced to officially stop operations in India.

The reality is that is there is no change Compassion will formally end all program operations in India on Wednesday 15 March.

– Tim Hanna, Compassion Australia CEO.

Compassion have been working in India for almost 50 years and I believe it has the largest number of child sponsors of any country.

The health and well being of 147,000 kids. Not to mention the almost 7500 NGO workers from 580 development centres who are impacted. Plus the spiritual impact of the future generations of kids in India… this is a serious situation which calls for a massive response in prayer – we know God has all this in His mighty hands and will work His purposes whatever the outcome, but I encourage you to pray nonetheless.

So check out the info below to learn more about the situation… then pray.

India Update – Compassion Australia

Due to a lack of funding resulting from the Indian Government’s restrictions, we will likely be forced to shut down our sponsorship program in India in March 2017. It deeply grieves us to think about what it would mean to end all of the relationships between Compassion children in India and their sponsors.

Article from Christianity Today

“Our staff in the India field offices have stretched every last penny beyond what we thought possible to extend the programs for our children, while we in parallel explored alternative delivery methods to provide funds, yet a solution has not been discovered within the needed timeframe,” stated Compassion’s email to donors.

An interesting tweet I found…

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Look up [Perspective]

Things are pretty hectic with kids, a business to run and just the general run of life. It’s very easy to be completely caught up in my own life – head down, focusing on all my own issues and worries. But every now and then I get stirred, I get moved, or even a little shaken by something.  I’m sure it’s God’s way of giving me perspective – keeping my view up and out, rather than my default which is deeply entrenched in my own life.

Last week I got a text message from my wife Beck right in the middle of a super busy day at work:

…check out the blog post “a holy experience” – into Iraq #2. Life Less Greedy post. In tears after reading it. It needs to be told. X.

At that point I really had no time to read the article, but a part of me couldn’t ignore this prompting, nor the response that Beck had to the article. It came at a bad time in terms of my busy little world, but after reading just a few lines, my world suddenly seemed somewhat insignificant… that ‘important’ job I needed to get out to the client really didn’t seem that matter that much.

It was nice gain some healthy perspective. Continue reading “Look up [Perspective]” →

Thankfulness

“If you were to wake up tomorrow, with only the things you thanked God for today, what would you have?”

What an awesome question. Thankfulness in general will transform your perspective indeed. But, thankfulness to God, will completely change your life, like it did for Helen… what an amazing story.

Thanks for a great video Open Doors Australia.

Lately: The Economics of Giving

On the final run down to Christmas 2012, and possibly the last post for the year (given my record lately!), I thought I’d share a good commentary on gift giving I read lately… Enjoy.

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“With just one week till Christmas … we are reminding ourselves of the gift that we have been given at the first Christmas.
Continue reading “Lately: The Economics of Giving” →

So Much More Than a Box

The OCC Story: You might be familiar with the mission of Operation Christmas Child. But there’s a lot more to the story than just shoe boxes.

Clever little video showing the lasting impact of this awesome ministry. Enjoy, and get your box together for this Christmas!

What do we learn from death?

No one really likes funerals, because no one likes what they represent – death. A bit of a morbid subject indeed, but we had our Nanny’s funeral earlier this week so I have been reflecting on these things a little more lately. There are so many things that death exposes and stuff we learn about ourselves and others that we might never have been known before.

Nanny

Nanny’s funeral was beautiful; sad, but also joyful and comforting. We heard stories about Nanny that we’d never heard, learnt things about the family we’d never known. We cried, we remembered, and we certainly laughed. One thing that particularly stuck in my mind from one of the speeches was that Nanny was a very contented person, never one to complain of not having enough, or fussy about having the latest and greatest, the biggest and best. On reflection this was clearly evident in her life. I think it was definitely part of her beautiful character, and also a product of her generation and upbringing. Most people have no idea what hardship is like… those, like Nanny, who went through the great depression know exactly what it’s like – it shaped their life and taught them to be frugal, wise and not wanting, but appreciative of the basic things in life. This is something we really have no concept of in today’s western culture of ‘never enough’. Continue reading “What do we learn from death?” →