Tiny Scraps of Humanity

The photo above shows Vietnamese orphans being cared for in an orphanage in Saigon during the Vietnamese war.

What has this got to do with me?

I worked as a nurse during the war taking care of orphans. The excerpt below from my book is a topic that none of us likes to think about in our lives of relative peace and serenity. However, war continues to be a reality in our world today. Hard to ignore!

“The babies don’t go away, except these few I randomly chose at the orphanage. More babies keep coming. The Vietnamese nuns, Brides of Christ, serve in the orphanage. They soldier on to promote love and life in the midst of this war of destruction. Like any war, it keeps churning out babies, made in God’s image. They are spewed out like spent cartridges of bullets fired from guns bent on death.”

“These babies were the bitter fruits of the war. Many were mixed-race, the product of American GIs and Vietnamese women. Culturally, these “Amerasians” were spurned as inferior and defiled. The bombings and battles left dead parents in their wake and orphaned children. The disruption of planting and harvesting provoked extreme poverty to already subsistence farmers. Babies were a burden many desperate mothers could not bear. We could measure the statistics, but no one could gauge the anguish and human suffering.”

Whew! Hard to think about. I know it is for me even as I write this, even though I lived this for a whole year of my life.

How do you deal with human suffering, be it near or far?

Ignore it? Deny it? Rrrr

Reach out and send aid or deliver a meal? Pray?

????

???? Pray?