RSSApril 18, Easter II
by the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton for ERD
4/18/2004
Acts 5:12a, 17-22, 25-29 or Job 42:1-6
Revelation 1:(1-8)9-19 or Acts 5:12a, 17-22, 25-29
John 20:19-31
Psalm 111 or 118:19-24
Seeing a Future Where Once There Was None
Unless I see, Thomas says, I will not believe.
We have seen the Lord! The other disciples tell him.
A ghost has not flesh and blood, as you see that I have, the risen Christ says. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed.
At Holy Cross Hospice in the Tlkoweng district of Botswana, patients with HIV-AIDS are getting their lives back: Anti-Retroviral medication, rare and precious in Africa, is made available to them there with the assistance of Episcopal Relief and Development. The weeks pass -- they gain weight, feel energy again. What they see in the mirror is a miracle.
And they see a future. Once, their task was simply to prepare for an early death. Now it is to prepare for life: in some ways, this is harder. Holy Cross offers a nuts-and-bolts response to their new hope: vocational training. And training for them and their families in the truth about HIV/AIDS: with their new future will come a new chance to bear the good news of their release from sickness and death. They will be the prophets of HIV/AIDS' new face. Through their witness, this disease will be de-stigmatized, openly named and fought. More people will go without fear for treatment that returns them to the land of the living.
Perhaps hope is simply a new way of seeing. When I make a gift to ERD's work with AIDS in Africa, I am helping people see in this new way. I shall not die, but live. I can work again. I can raise my children. It is not over for me, after all.
And ERD doesn't just help them see differently. It helps me see differently, too. We see Africa as abject, as the eternal victim. We see its people as helpless and hopeless, and we see them as inevitably so. We are not used to seeing them in any other way.
But Africa is full of leaders, full talented people. Africa is a place of hope. It is just where the world expects only despair that God plants the seeds of hope. We can help in the planting. And when the young plants emerge from the earth, we will see them. Where we saw nothing before.
Episcopal Relief and Development is an effective, reliable, and vital ministry of the Episcopal Church in communities around the world. Episcopal Relief and Development provides emergency assistance in times of disaster, rebuilds devastated communities after the immediate crisis is over, and offers long-term solutions to help people sustain safer, healthier, and more productive lives.
