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By prayerfully meditating before a crucifix, one can see and begin to understand, the ultimate result of sin.
The Romans’ sins, the Jews’ sins, our sins nailed our Lord Jesus to the cross. The cost of sin is death. Our sins killed the Son of God. Our sins crucified our loving Lord. And our sins continue his suffering passion.
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Emergency: Syria! Emergency: South Sudan! Emergency: Democratic Republic of the Congo!
These are the alarming messages being displayed on the homepage (www.unhcr.org) of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
According to the UNHCR, Syria has more people forcibly displaced than any country on earth. Over nine million Syrians have been uprooted from their homes due to civil war — over 2.5 million of them have fled to neighboring countries as refugees. And most distressing, more than half of the displaced are children.
In South Sudan, UNHCR reports the civil war and growing food shortages there has led to approximately 2,000 people crossing into nearby countries per day. Many of these refugees have been arriving exhausted, nutritionally weak, and in poor health.
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We turn on our faucets and out comes water — clean, refreshing, plentiful, life-sustaining water. But we rarely give it a thought.
We just tend to take for granted that it will always be there. We even forget to thank God — the well-spring of life.
But for 768 million fellow human beings, clean plentiful water is a distant dream, according to the United Nations. For them, the water they drink, cook with, and bath in, is polluted and often disease-ridden, and must be carried long distances in many cases.
According to figures released by the United Nations Children‘s Fund in 2013, lack of access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene is a leading cause of death from diarrhea in children under five, amounting to approximately 1,400 children dying each day.