Sanctity of Life

More than 300 million people in the Sub-Saharan Africa make less than $1 a day. This number is expected to rise to 400 million by 2015 (The World Bank).
Every year Sub-Saharan Africa spends $14.5 billion dollars repaying debt to the world’s richest countries and international institutions. Nigeria debt payments are 11 times higher than the national health budget (IMF).
6,500 people are dying of AIDS each day in Africa, and another 9,500 contract the HIV virus. 1,400 of those contract the disease during childbirth or by their mother’s milk. Africa is home to 30 million or 70-percent of the global AIDS infections (UNAIDS).
AIDS is a preventable and treatable disease. With proper training and involvement, Uganda has reduced its rate of infection from 15-percent to 5-percent (USAID).
4.1 million African AIDS patients are in need of anti-retroviral drugs that allow patients to restore their health and help them to continue living a productive life, caring for their families. Of these 4.1 million, only and estimated 50,000 will receive them (WHO).
Last year during his State of the Union Address, President George Bush committed the United States to sending more aid to Africa to help fight and prevent the spread of AIDS, yet the majority of the money has been caught up in red tape.
And while 6,500 people die each day -- we simply step back and say it’s not my problem.
How have we come to a point where we place so little value on human life?
Since 1973, 43 million babies have been innocently killed in the name of choice.
Rulers and dictators around the world have killed millions and millions of people because they disagree with their race or religion.
Yet I continue to read e-mails from people complaining about a war that was fought to protect the rights and lives of the citizens of Iraq.
Do we really value human life, or just the lives of those close to us?
When congressional leaders can argue passionately that the horrendous procedure of partial-birth abortion is an American right, we’ve lost the value and sanctity of human life. And it shows in more ways than one.
King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:18-21, “I said to myself regarding the human race, ‘God's testing the lot of us, showing us up as nothing but animals.’ Humans and animals come to the same end -- humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there's really no advantage in being human. None. Everything's smoke. We all end up in the same place--we all came from dust, we all end up as dust. Nobody knows for sure that the human spirit rises to heaven or that the animal spirit sinks into the earth.”
Solomon is saying that without revelation from God, we are no different than the animals.
Everything’s smoke. From dust we come and to dust we go.
At first glance it sounds like Solomon could have been the first animal rights activists. After all isn’t that what they all want?
They want animals elevated to a status equal or higher than that of mankind, while at the same time they reduce the value of human life to nothing more than something that can easily be tossed aside in a time of inconvenience.
I was astonished Tuesday night as I watched the O’Reilly Factor and heard author Alexander Sanger ("Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century") tell O’Reilly that our government should protect the right of a mother to kill her baby as long as it was still attached by the umbilical cord.
The value of life has been cheapened and reduced to something that can be tossed in the nearest trash can at our convenience.
Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
This scripture entails all of humanity.
From the living fetus at conception, to the orphan children in Africa, to the aging saints living in a retirement home, we are all created in the image of God.
The Psalmist writes, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Human life is priceless.
Yet our society continues to put a price tag on it.
If a birth is inconvenient, or if saving a life will raise my taxes, or if I have to make a donation - it’s not my problem to take care of.
How can we continue to ignore the value of life?
We all want a good life for ourselves, our families and those we love -- yet we can’t seem to take the time to give value and help to a mother of three, dying of AIDS in another country.
There is so much we can be doing to show our fellow man that we do care and that we will come to their aid.
But before we can do that, we must each look at our own lives and see how much we really value life.
And I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I’m just as guilty as the next person when it comes to loving my neighbor.
So during this month recognizing the Sanctity of Life let’s ask ourselves:
Do we care for the poor orphans in Iraq, Africa or Ukraine?
Do we care about the homeless seeking shelter and warmth under a highway overpass?
Do we care about the poor in our community who need a helping hand just to make it week to week?
Do we care about the unborn children who have no one to protect them or watch over their rights?
Or are we too busy to care and love anyone but our friends, families and ourselves?
I hope that for each of us, the latter is not the case.
In closing I leave you with a statement from United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"AIDS is not only sapping their (Africa's) today, it is stealing their tomorrow. And it is threatening democracy, prosperity and security all around the world. None of us can afford to look the other way and pretend that the AIDS crisis is somebody else's concern or that it isn't a crisis at all. It affects us all. All of us are vulnerable.”

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