The Art of Embrace

I recently volunteered for a nursing home for the elderly where my heart went through a fine tuning when it comes to philanthropy. I was challenged by need. Then I came home to a letter from a child that I sponsored in Uganda, thanking me for sponsoring him. My donation helped his family to educate him through an international programme. I sat there wondering if I have become so commercial, thanks to my western world, that I'd forgotten how to feel compassion for another human being.

Questions like, 'What if that child was mine? How would I respond if I saw that no one else cared about his life? If truth be told, I would beg someone to help my child. I would do anything I could. That mother in Uganda did not know when her son was being born, that someone on the other side of the world would come alongside her, to help her raise him. She has hopes and dreams like I do. She must have found some glimmering hope when the village announced that they were partnering with an International organisation that would mean an education for her child. She did not know that in January 2006, on a cold English

Day that I'd pick up her son's picture and decide that I would come alongside her hopes and dreams and help her make those dreams happen. In fact, I chose him because he was still waiting for six months to find a sponsor. He was much older than the other kids. But, something in my heart said to grab his picture. Oh, the hope of a mother. It is unfailing.

There is another unfailing hope. I affectionately call it 'Humanity's hands'. The hands that extend toward another in need. When I look at rainbows, I often see an immersion of colour. Those colours were meant to be there to contribute to some picturesque frame, only Heaven's eye can see. They extend their bows from one end to the other, standing with purpose. Perhaps from the northern hemisphere to the South, we as a people can extend generous hands and create this glorious hope that stands with the purpose to defeat the sting of poverty, trafficking etc. A rather Utopian belief but an achievable one.

None is excluded from this invitation to participate. In fact, the Eternal smiles, I'm sure, when we say yes to making this world better for one more. The human heart is always yearning for love. We don't always need to be the recipients of it first. Sometimes we need to give love away first before it finds us in return. Why not give sow that affection into the life of one who can't give anything in return but a letter of thanks with sentiments that will forever be etched in your memory. Find someone, perhaps through a charity that needs some help and prepare your heart to give it to them. I promise you a feeling so rich; you wouldn't ever be the same again. Why not enrol in that volunteer program abroad or even in your neighbourhood. Someone somewhere is hoping that you would.

I'm up for the challenge. Are you?