Wake Up And Do Something!

This picture was taken by photographer, Kevin Carter, in 1994 and won a Pulitzer Prize. The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards a United Nations food camp located just under a mile away. The vulture was waiting for the child to die, so that he could eat it. The world was shocked when it saw this picture. No one knows the outcome of this situation (including Kevin Carter, who left the scene immediately after taking the picture.) Carter committed suicide three months later after suffering severe depression.

When my wife, Melanie, called me over to her computer to look at this picture and read the above caption, the same thought immediately came to our minds. "This is exactly what many in the church are doing today!"

How could this man see this child literally "crawling for his life" and merely snap a picture and leave the scene? How could you reconcile in your heart that it would be okay for this emaciated little child to fend for itself in the face of starvation and the threat of being eaten by a vulture and just going about his own business?

Did he reason to himself; "I am not here to feed or rescue people, that is someone else's job, responsibility or gifting." or "If it is meant to be, then the child will make it to the food camp." or simply, "There are so many in this condition, what I could do would not have any great impact."

I wonder if he had to ask himself te same question afterwards? Was the realization that he could have done something the thing that pushed him over the edge and caused him to take his own life? Did the guilt of seeing the child about to die and just walking away plague him to the degree that he could not cope any further?

What about you? How many salvation starved people do you casually pass on a daily basis as they struggle to find the only spiritual food that can keep them from dying and going to hell (Jesus)? How many people have passed by as the vulture of this world (Satan) waits to pounce on their fallen, starving souls and you just walk on by without lifting a finger to help?

Do you ever say that winning the lost is the responsibility of someone else? Do you say that your job (or gift) is doing something other than rescuing the lost and dying as they struggle in their sin. Maybe you have been called to do something a little less intense (like just take pictures of the problem).

On every street, in every shopping mall, school, and place of business, there are multitudes just like this starving, dying child needing you to do something MORE than just gaze at their situation. They need YOU to chase off the vultures of death, hell and destruction and carry them (if you must) to the only place that they can be fed (the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ).

If you don't...you have already committed spiritual suicide. Do you think that the parent of this child would look at the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph and say, "Well done!"

Neither will God, the Father.

Ezekekiel 3:1818 When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood."