Check Out Gentle Answers

I have a former boss who has started a very interesting blog call Gentle Answers. I would encourage everyone to read his short, wise comments. He is on blogspot as well.

Strange Sources of Encouragement

Last blog, the one about the child being buried, I asked you to pray for more ways to live like Jesus in the community that we have been called to. God has begun to answer through what I would consider, a less than conventional way. I have always been interested in reading Victor Hugo's Les Mise'rables since Junior High Literature. Last week I checked out the hefty tome (1200+ pages in the translation by Julie Rose in the Modern Library). I just started reading and in the first twenty eight pages I have found much food for thought.

I would encourage everyone to read the first thirty pages.

Buried in the Kitchen Floor

The other day I was reading the local paper, Sunstar, and came across a story that I still find hard to conceive of. A grandfather had been reprimanded by the officials for burying his newborn granddaughter in the dirt of the kitchen floor. Now, I know that it is illegal to just bury someone anywhere but this had to be the most sad incident I have ever heard of.

The child died shortly after being born at home. By now you have all realized that the family is poor. The child died at birth, the kitchen floor was dirt and in a Roman Catholic country burying someone in unholy ground is the same as sending them to hell. Can you imagine what that was like to be digging a hole in the kitchen to bury your granddaughter? What was it like to be the mother in the next room, if the house had more than one room? What was it like to have bury the tiny body in the floor because you do not have any place else?

The local government did not send them to jail. They exhumed the body and buried it in "holy" ground. Then they warned the family to not do it again.

What kind of world do we live in where this kind of thing happens? Please pray that Carol and I will figure out further ways to be Jesus in this community.