Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts

Monday, July 8, 2013

Pro-God And Pro-People

Susan B. Anthony refused to pay a fine for voting because in the 1800s United States law prohibited women from voting. Anthony did the right thing. In 1920 American women secured the right to vote.

Jeremiah 1:11 Amplified Bible says, "Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Jeremiah, what do you see? And I said, I see a branch or shoot of an almond tree [the emblem of alertness and activity, blossoming in late winter]." Women have gone beyond the right to vote and are now pursuing global equality and freedom. In 1953 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit became the first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly. Today Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the eldest of eight children, a mother of four children and an anti-apartheid activist, is the head of the African Union which is focusing on an African renaissance of growth, peace, stability and development.

Being pro-woman is not being anti-man. Galatians 3:27-29 New Living Translation Bible says, "And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you."

God promised Abraham that he would be blessed, be a blessing to others and would have an abundance of descendants. However, some people hate males and females. In China since 1971 336 million unborn girls and unborn boys have lost their lives through abortion and 222 men and women have been sterilized. Many of these abortions and sterilizations are forced. A ChinaAid News March 24, 2013, "With ChinaAid's Help, Two Victims of China's One-Child Policy Granted UNHCR Refugee Status" article reports that in 1995, when Guo Yanling was eight months pregnant, she was forced to have an abortion. In 1999, she was forcibly sterilized. In 2006, she was imprisoned for not being able to pay a fine for having more than one child. The Chinese government also refused to issue household registrations to her and to her husband, Du Yiliang's, three children without which they are unable to attend school or receive government benefits. Guo Yanling's and Du Yiliang's abortion, sterilization, educational and economic terror experience is typical in China. What isn't nearly as typical is that with ChinaAid’s help, Guo Yanling and Du Yiliang have been granted refugee status by the UN High Commission on Refugees and are living in Thailand.

In America unborn baby boys and unborn baby girls had their right to life stolen by the 1973 US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision.

While America has many Christians and Jews, America has a persistent problem in ensuring the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. The 1927 US Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell  ruled that forced sterilization of people with disabilities was not a violation of their constitutional rights. By the 1970s more than 60,000 disabled people were sterilized without their consent.

We need to fully defeat the idea that only certain people can contribute to society and are entitled to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Former Mexican President Benito Juarez said, "El respecto ajeno es la paz" (The respect for the rights of others is peace.") Christian Minister and Civil Rights Activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured."

Friday, May 3, 2013

Help To Make A Happy Birthday

What can I do to help someone? Matthew 10:41-42 Amplified Bible says, "He who receives and welcomes and accepts a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward, and he who receives and welcomes and accepts a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives to one of these little ones [in rank or influence] even a cup of cold water because he is My disciple, surely I declare to you, he shall not lose his reward."

Many individuals signed petitions over a period of time to have Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday become a federal holiday in the United States of America. On November 2, 1983, former US President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating the federal holiday Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Will you sign a petition and write a letter to help free Pastor and U.S. Citizen Saeed Abedini from Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran, being coordinated at http://www.savesaeed.org? Join the more than 581,000 people worldwide from more than 180 countries who have signed the petition. Iranian authorities put Pastor Abedini under house arrest in July 2012 separating him from his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, and their two young children. In September 2012 they arrested him. In January 2013 Iranian authorities sentenced him to an eight-year prison sentence for  "threatening the national security of Iran;" Pastor Abedini had been involved in setting up Christian house churches in Iran and also a secular orphanage. Pastor Abedini is currently in solitary confinement, has been subject to physical and psychological abuse to pressure him to give up his faith and has not been able to receive medical treatment for internal injuries resulting from the abuse.

Un Dicho (A Proverb) says, "Una buena accion es la mejor oracion." ("A good deed is the best prayer.") Pastor Abedini's birthday is May 7th. Pastor Abedini and Naghmeh are both from Iran. They are also both Muslims who converted to Christianity and became US citizens. Naghmeh Abedini cannot surprise her sweetheart in person for his birthday because to do so might put her in jail too, but she and others can send a card and a gift by signing the petition and writing a letter to Pastor Abedini via http://www.savesaeed.org.

Asghedom Michael wrote a love poem "Asmeret" that says in part:
"Enthroned in love you are
You're as wise as you are beautiful
I'll spend my life with you if you'll let me."

Jesus Christ loves us and wants to spend the rest of life with us. This is Holy Week for Orthodox Christians. On a Friday more than 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross and died to make a way for God and believers to have a permanent relationship. Then Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Sunday. Thanks to the King of Kings believers have a spiritual birthday as eternal kings and queens.

In addition to parenting the Abedini children without their father's presence, Naghmeh has been speaking publicly to churches, the media and others about her husband's plight in prison for his Christian faith. The red-crowned crane is a symbol of long life and good fortune in China and in Japan. By signing the petition and writing a letter at http://www.savesaeed.org you are helping to free Pastor Abedini from prison and to allow a happy May 7th birthday and a long, happy family life together for Saeed, Naghmeh and their children.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Estas loco! (Are You Crazy!)

A Chinese proverb says, "Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes." One great soul, George Washington Carver said, ". . . It has always been the one great ideal of my life  . . .  to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people."

Carver was born of slave parents in the 1860's on a plantation in Missouri. Carver taught himself to read. Although he won a scholarship to attend Highland University, when he showed up for school, Highland refused Carver admission because he was black. This set-back did not stop Carver from furthering his educating.

Another black man, Booker Taliaferro Washington, saw the bounteous ability in Carver who had been doing research at Iowa Agricultural College after 1891.

Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, sent Carver a letter in 1896 asking Carver to work at the Tuskegee Institute as the head of its Agriculture Department. Susan Altman writes in her book, Extraordinary Black Americans From Colonial To Contemporary Times, "At Tuskegee, Carver developed a system of crop rotation. He planted a legume crop (such as peanuts, which replenish minerals in the soil) one year, followed by a crop of cotton the next year. Its purpose was to keep the soil rich and improve the harvest. This system became so successful that an oversupply of peanuts resulted. Carver responded by coming up with more than two dozen uses for them. Soon, farmers were making more money raising peanuts than harvesting cotton."

"Whatever you are, be a good one," said former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, encouraging border states to outlaw slavery, helped push through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which finally freed all the slaves nationwide in December 1865, led the United States through the American Civil War preserving the Union and battled periods of depression. In addition to his crop-rotation system Carver invented more than 300 products from the peanut and more than 100 products from the sweet potato.

Carver received job offers from famous and accomplished people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford says Altman. Carver rejected these offers. Some may have told Carver something like, "Estas loco!" (You are crazy!)."

Money was not the primary motivator of Carver's life. Carver is a Christian who was committed to God and the advancement of people, especially African Americans.

Carver worked 47 years for Washington, who was freed from African-American slavery as a boy and rose to becoming an educator, speaker, author and to the top of African-American leadership during Jim Crow segregation.

"Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible," said Carver.

"The mind of the prudent is ever getting knowledge, and the ear of the wise is ever seeking (inquiring for and craving) knowledge," says Proverbs 18:15 Amplified Bible.

Carver prized and practiced seeking and sharing education all his life. God makes each person unique. Everyone has something to share. Romans 12:13 Complete Jewish Bible says, "Share what you have with God’s people, and practice hospitality."