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RSSMothers and Children
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
7/23/2007
8 Pentecost Proper 11, Year C
Amos 8:1-12 or Genesis 18:1-10a
Psalm 52 or 15
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42
I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son. -- Genesis 18:10a
Again and again in scripture, the figure of the childless woman is one of hopelessness. Who will care for her in her old age? Who will help support the family in all the jobs supporting a family entails -- plowing, planting, hunting, pasturing animals, cooking, weaving, sewing? Women wanted lots of children.
Besides, life was uncertain. Children died easily then. We look at the sturdy little bodies of our own children and rejoice that those days are long gone.
But they are not gone.
In Afghanistan, one in four children dies before reaching the age of five. Half the population lives in poverty. Because girls and women were denied education under the Taliban, the literacy rate among the female population is as low as 4% to 14%.
Episcopal Relief and Development partners with Afghans For Tomorrow (A4T), a unique organization of young Afghani professionals in the United states that works with Episcopal Relief and Development, to support volunteer and paid workers on the ground in Afghanistan, especially in the areas of reconstruction, health care and education. Together, ERD and A4T have built a school for older girls in Chel-Souton, an impoverished suburb of Kabul. The school offers students a chance to complete the schooling interrupted by the Taliban and to learn a trade to help support their families. This partnership has also created a health clinic in the village of Sheik Yassin, with a doctor, a nurse, and reproductive and maternal health services, together with sufficient security services to ensure the safe operation of the clinic in a country where life is every bit as uncertain as it was in Biblical times.
