I just read a book that opened my eyes and broke my heart. I believe what I’m about to share is worth a few minutes of your time. The name of the book is Red Letters by Tom Davis. I am going to start with an excerpt from the book about a little girl named Adanna. I will foreworn you that the story is graphic, but I think it will impact you in a similar way. Take a few minutes and read on.
Adanna’s name is a beautiful African word meaning “father’s daughter.” But Adanna won’t live until the next harvest season unless something dramatic happens. In her home country of Zimbabwe, there are no jobs, there is no money, and the only thing certain is the death that surrounds her.
The expected life span for people in her country is only thirty-three. She has watched her mother, her father, and her sister waste away to AIDS. Adanna is now in charge of her family. She is the head of the household. She is ten years old.
Adanna’s parents left no way for her to care for herself and the rest of the family. She has exhausted every favor from her neighbors, every form of assistance from surviving relatives, and sold her last possession for food. But she and her brother and sister woke up starving again this morning.
There is only one way for them to survive. Adanna has heard about a group of local men who will trade food for sex. Dare she even consider such a thing? For all of her young life she has dreamed of someday having a family of her own. She has protected her purity because she wants the man she marries to be the only lover she ever knows. Her mother taught her this.
Adanna’s dreams and her purity mean everything to her, but if she doesn’t eat soon, neither will matter. She will be dead.
Children grow up fast in Africa. She makes a decision. A terrible, necessary decision. She goes to these men. Perhaps they’ll have compassion for her. Perhaps they’ll give her food without asking anything in return. They look at her, they grab her, they fondle her, and they laugh. They refuse to give her food. “Why should we give you anything, you ugly little mongrel?” they shout.
They tell her to go into the back room of the store and wait. She steps into a room that smells of urine and mold. She is shaking. A sickly man is sleeping in the corner.
Suddenly, three men come in drinking and shouting. They approach her not as a human being but as a mere animal. She screams. She cries. Nobody is listening. Nobody cares.
And they steal her dreams.
She leaves with food. Enough to keep her alive. But what kind of life? She just contracted HIV. She will die of AIDS within three years.
Pretty hard to swallow. Pretty heart breaking. I have worked with youth throughout the course of the last ten years and seen difficult and heart breaking situations. I have experienced hardship in my own life. But my stories don’t compare to ones like Adanna’s.
So what? What do we do when we read stories like this one? Does something in you spark up that wants to bring justice or aid to the Adanna’s throughout the world? In Matthew 25 Jesus reminds us in so many words, that when we ignore the poor, when we ignore the needy, when we forget about them because we are caught up in our own world of busyness, we are ignoring him. In the Message translation in vs. 45 he says, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me-you failed to do it to me.”
Why did I feel burdened to share this? Because I think each and everyone of us can make a difference. We can make a difference by praying for the AIDS pandemic on a regular basis. It only takes a few minutes to pray. We can occasionally give up a latte drink at Starbucks and put that money towards medicine for an AIDS victim or food, clothing and education for ten year olds like Adanna who have nothing. We can live more simply and give more freely. It is a choice…and one that I believe is urgent for those of us who have been given so much.
I urge you to pray about how God would have you respond to this if your heart has been moved. Click Here to check out Tom Davis’s blog. You can download and read the first chapter of Red Letters here. Simply buying a copy of this book will feed an orphan for a month. It is that easy to make a difference. We are called to make a difference. We are called to live out the gospel and not just read it. Are you doing that?
