Worthy

Reading my friend Kimberly's blog always brings tears, sometimes tears of laughter, more often tears of sorrow so deep as to take my breath away.

I saw a tenderness in the father’s loving concern for his child, and a hopeful trust in the cradled child as she looked into her father’s face. This may sound normal to you, but it is extraordinary in a land riddled with fathers who abandon their children through war, famine, fear, or through trauma that seems to emotionally just shut them down. - Matt McGowen, guest blogger, Life that Matters 

This morning as I read about a father and daughter in Sudan, my heart also grieves for daughters here in the U.S. whose fathers abandon them, often putting them at risk economically, physically, spiritually. Abandonment in our culture - perhaps in all cultures - opens the door for the enemy's cruel lie of worthlessness, a false belief that she is not worthy of love.

We are all worthy of love.

What is is about U.S. culture that is traumatizing our fathers? Our young men?

What is the first step in healing? What is the first step in the restoration of Hope?

Rw

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. - Philippians 2:1-4 NIV