Leanne Shawler, Artist

Yesterday, the internet buzzed with the Human Resources policy change at World Vision. I read plenty about it, from the announcement in Christianity Today to various bloggers, but this post really hit home. When Evangelicals Turn Against Children to Spite Me by Benjamin Moburg at Registered Runaway Please read it. I am already a World Vision sponsor. (I posted about my process in deciding last year.) I am planning to make an additional donation to help offset those dropped sponsorships, but I'm praying that folks won't actually go through with it and will think of the child they committed to helping.

I mentioned during the 31 Days of Encountering Judaism about the concept of tikkun olam , or healing the world. There are many ways to do this, and this might become a recurring theme on this blog, but the first way is perhaps not the most obvious. I'd like you to join me in sponsoring a child through World Vision. It's an act that makes the difference for not just a single child, but for her family and her village. It'll transform you, too. It took me a long time to decide to become a child sponsor. I worried about the overhead costs, and how much benefit it would really have. (Rachel Held Evans did too , but promise me you’ll come back and finish reading this post!) But then God slowly worked to change my heart. It was a woman speaker at a conference (I wish I could remember who -- it was in Orange County) who talked about meeting the child whose photo was on her fridge. It was fellow bloggers who wrote about traveling to these places where child sponsorsh...