Please, Please Come…

I am no saint

In fact I’m less

I fail to live up to the gospel I preach each and every day

in the words of Dorothy Day “don’t call us saints”

We don’t want to be dismissed that easily

I promise I am no different from any one of you hearing this

I just now have family all over the world

So I have to tell you this

You have to come

You just have to 

I don’t know how to say this more urgently

As you listen to this my shoulder is damp for the tears poured from my heart

This world, our world, is  a mess

It’s a terrible place

We are a wretched species

In developed nations I watched people destroy their minds with narcotics

Believing that they are escaping from the troubles of this world 

I’ve watched beautiful young men and women drink themselves into such a stopper it is disgraceful 

In the east I’ve seen
girls who can be no older than eight years old who are slaves out on the
streets begging and performing for money

And they are the lucky ones 

The ones who are lucky
enough not to become the sexual slaves of richer men demanding
disgusting perversions and obscene actions from a child

From a child

In africa a man was burned alive outside the house I was sleeping in because he had tried to steal food

I believe it is safe to say he did it because he was hungry

I tried to talk to kids who have chosen to huff glue rather than deal with the hunger pains

They were too high to remember the questions I had just asked them

No longer had any consciousness left to connect to this world

Whose eyes were glazed over like the glue in the bottle at their lips

This world is a terrible place

You have to come

You have to do something

But please, please don’t just give money

I’ve seen charity and charity just seems to fall short

I’ve seen clothes get
donated by well-intentioned middle-class Americans end up in markets
being sold for a few dollars here or there

I’ve seen the money do both good and bad things

Money doesn’t create relationships

Money doesn’t make you family

I just think we are capable of more

Meet these people

It will make all the difference

So I plead with you, come

You see when I think of a deformed child he is no longer a nameless picture

He is Jason

Jason is a boy in the
Philippines who was born with such a cleft lip he could not nurse from
his own mother’s breast, and as a result is malnourished and half the
weight he should be

When I hear statistics about slums I no longer feel pity

But I’m reminded of my
friend Reagan, who despite living in Kibera has devoted his life to
returning boys living on the streets of Nairobi back to their homes

When I hear about starving children on the streets it is no longer a child on the television used by someone to ask me for money

It is now Kevin, a ten year old boy who lives on the streets and who is more often than not too high on glue to remember my name

When I hear about prostitution the faces of Plang, and Urn, and Pin–beautiful Thai Girls flash before my eyes

Young girls who by the grace of God were rescued before being sold by their families to brothels as salves and prostitutes

You have to come

Please come

We cannot let tragedies remain statistics

We must make them family

If you are a Christian, Jason is your child, Reagan is your brother, and Plang and Urn are your nieces

If you are not a Christian, these are living breathing people

They are not numbers

they are not data

they are my family members

Please, please just come

Meet these numbers

Make them your friends

Make them your family

I don’t want this world to be like this any longer 

Please come my brothers and sisters, my mothers and fathers

Please, please come