Reaching Out to Our Communities

"What I’m interested in seeing you do is this: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families." So the Holy Bible records in Isaiah 58 verses 6 - 7.

National Youth Service - Naija Style
I recently took the time to catch up with my 23 year old nephew, fresh out of University. He readily relayed to me that all was well with him: he was serving – experiencing the joys of our nation’s compulsory National Youth Service. But the truth of that statement was tested when I prompted him on the scope of the activities of youth service. Together with a handful of other Youth Corps, he’s been teaching primary and secondary school children at a village in Taraba state, some two hours drive from the capital city, in the north east of Nigeria. Attendance levels are brutally poor. Parents have not yet grasped the value of education and see it as an expensive distraction. Students therefore usually attend school when and if their families release them from farm work.

My nephew told me that the students’ spoken English is exceptionally poor – they are only fully conversant in their local dialect. Horrified, I asked: ‘’So how do you communicate with them?’’ ‘’I do the best I can.’’ ‘’What do you teach them?’’ ‘’English. Mathematics. Anything. We just seek to educate them.’’ Children in these villages are taught by folks in the National Youth Corps every year. The Government has never been successful in getting trained teachers to relocate to the area. Annual promotion to the higher class group is automatically conferred to all students. No meritocracy here. These are children who may never realise their God given potential.

Safeguarding rights of all kinds
What becomes of you if your knowledge and awareness is so limited; and your insight so dulled? In the developing world the majority of our populace have limited understanding of the basic human rights which they can access. Not just political rights. Let’s add to those social and economic rights. The majority of the citizenry will never be aware, or comprehend, nor be concerned that their governments have signed up to international conventions which guarantee them the right to education, decent housing, health services etc. Even if some in the citizenry appreciate this reality, they may not know how to access them nor have the means to access them – and that normally means financial resources.

Ignorance and its price
In this light I recall an account relayed to me in jest about a poor, female villager who had died during childbirth. This woman had endured labour pains for some days and, unable to bear the pain but without the resources (finances and transport) to seek the help of a medical doctor, had gone to the local witch-doctor for help. He had promptly given her a feather and other charms to cure her woes and birth the child. Needless to say, the child was never birthed and the woman never made it through the labour pains. Both she and her child lost their lives.

My question was and still remains: why wasn’t there a district hospital, a district health centre, a trained traditional birth attendant, nearby? If that woman had had access to a certain level of academic and Word based education, she would have known not to seek the assistance of a witch-doctor to give birth. She, and her child, died because of her ignorance and because of the failures and inadequacies of the central and local governance structures she found herself surrounded within.

Make purchases for the poor
But the Bible says we can make purchases without money, we can enjoy social and economic rights without having the resources at hand to access them ourselves. Isaiah 55 reads: ‘’Hey there! All who are thirsty come to The Water! Are you penniless? Come anyway – buy and eat. Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money – everything’s free.’’ How is that possible? Through the individual acts of kindness, charity and advocacy that we extend to the underprivileged in our communities.

We are the hands which the Lord uses to ensure that others buy without money. It is each of our individual acts of benevolence and compassion that causes others to make purchases, to move forward, without money. If you invest in a mentor/protégé relationship with a youth, or an underprivileged mother, you cause that youth, that mother, to make purchases without money. If you make a monthly contribution to the upkeep of an orphan through one of the many charitable organisations in our communities, you ensure that an underprivileged member of your society enjoys certain social and economic rights. If you hire a bus to bring worshippers to your local church on Sunday, you have caused others to make purchases – to be healed by the Word - without money.

Ensuring His Will is done on earth as it is in heaven
It may be these acts of kindness and quiet Christian witness that leads someone to Christ and brings them in contact with The Liberty that looses them from every spiritual, emotional, and material shackle. ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ It is for us to reverently avail ourselves in our spheres of influence to loose the chains of injustice, to cast our bread upon many waters, to reach out to our community and honour Him that gave us the resources in the first place to live in material, professional, financial and spiritual plenty – and that is how His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

What’s in if for you? What are the fringe benefits? Isaiah 58 verses 11 - 12: ‘’Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage.’’ Ecclesiastes 11 verse 1, goes further: ‘’Be generous: invest in acts of charity. Charity yields high returns.’’