Thought for the Week by Rev’d Vicci
Friends
This week is Christian Aid week, and although the street collections have by and large petered out, nevertheless this is a good time to remember the organisation both in our prayers and perhaps with an online donation.
Christian Aid was originally founded in 1945 by British and Irish churches, including the Methodist Church, to provide humanitarian relief to refugees and victims of the Second World War. Originally called “Christian Reconstruction in Europe” it has evolved over the last 80 years into a global development agency, tackling poverty, injustice and humanitarian crises. In the 1950’s, Christians Aid Week began, and the name Christian Aid was chosen in 1964. In the 1960s and ‘70s it expanded beyond Europe to include responses to humanitarian disasters in areas like Palestine and Korea, and in the 1980s and ‘90s, the organisation increased its focus on tackling the root causes of poverty, including campaigning for debt relief and justice for marginalised communities. It was Christian Aid that first coined the slogan, “Give a man a fish and youfeed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
From the 2000s to the present day, Christian Aid’s focus has been on global justice around climate change, tax justice and refugees across the globe, working with hundreds of local partner organisations in over 24 countries in South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia and is a founder member of the Disasters Emergency committee (DEC).
James 2:15-17 tells us this:” If a brother or sister is naked or lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
I don’t think that James is telling us that we must buy our way into heaven with good deeds here, but that if we truly love God, we would want to support our fellow human-beings. Christian Aid is one of the ways that we can do that, and I commend it to you this Christian Aid week.
God bless, Vicci