Like many, I watched Idol Gives Back.  Like many, I was both touched and appalled.  Touched at the generosity and compassion and appalled at the conditions under which so many live.  And I discovered the power of an image.

It’s the littlest victims that break my heart.  The fifteen-year-old boy raising his brothers and sisters because every adult in the family had died.  No water, no shelter, no protection or education or medicine.  This simply should not be.

But it is, and that night and all day yesterday, one image replayed in my mind over and over.  That was the image of the three little children showing how they sleep on a filthy piece of foam.  That was their bed.  Again.  No adults around.  Just these three little children in a shell of a room with no furniture, no water, no bathroom.  The clothes on their backs and this filthy piece of foam.

That image haunts me, and I think that’s a good thing.  I’m grateful for it.  Because it keeps the plight of others in the forefront of my mind.  It doesn’t let me forget that not taking a vacation or buying a new car or spending frivolously or just because I want something isn’t significant.  It isn’t even worth mentioning or thinking about.  Not when there are children in these positions.  Children being abused or neglected every thirty seconds.  That’s four in the time I’ve spent writing this post.

No one can cure all the ails for everyone.  How we wish we could!  But everyone can cure a bit of an ail for someone.  Whether that someone is near or far, stranger or friend–we can all do something.

So my something.  There will be no vacation.  There will be no new car or frivolous spending.  People matter more than things.  So instead, I’m going to use the resources available to me to cure a bit of an ail for someone who needs it.  And I’m going to remember what Christ said about the little ones.  What you do for them, you do for Him.

He gave all.

I’m going to remember that, too.

And those three babies on that filthy foam…

Blessings,

Vicki