The Trinity, Crisis Response, and Orphan Sunday

This is a guest post by Jordan Mogck, blogger at familia Dei and communicator with GlobalFingerprints, the EFCAs child sponsorship program.

Losing lives and property is devastating. Prolonged turmoil, unrest, and economic woe is enough to shatter even the most resilient characters. By far the most vulnerable, however, are the children left without parents after a crisis. In fact, the sheer abundance of orphaned children in the world has garnered for itself the stamp of "crisis".
With 163 million fatherless children around the world, a response from the Church is mandatory.
A devastating metaphor
One could say that the orphan crisis is a devastating metaphor for the gospel itself. For we, vulnerable and isolated children separated from the Father because of our sin, were left for dead.
The Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel, describes our sin-laden plight as orphans bluntly, "No eye pitied you...but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born" (16:5).
Orphaned children are specifically targeted for unimaginably horrific lives of sex-trafficking, guerilla warfare, and all that goes with it.
The societal and economic strains that the global orphan crisis entails, only perpetuates the problem. The shame a teenaged orphaned girl feels toward her son born of rape will abhor him and leave him for dead behind a dumpster. Mothers who cannot feed themselves, let alone a child, will leave their newborn in an open field to fend for itself against the elements.
Someone must intervene.
The Trinity in Crisis Response
Likewise, we are as good as dead left to our flesh, away from the Father. However, God is a "Father to the fatherless" (Psalm 68:5). Ezekiel continues, "When I [God] passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'" (16:6).
The Father responded to our crisis by sending Jesus to bring us into His Family, "he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:5). Adoption was how God responded to our orphan crisis.
The show goes on
There is an enormous, tangible global orphan crisis in our world. As adopted members of the family of God, we are bound to act out that same gospel on the world's stage. We need to engage.
GlobalFingerprints is the EFCA's child sponsorship program located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (where, in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is approximately 1 orphan in every 8 children) and Kolkata, India.
On November 6, churches everywhere will be engaging. November 6 has been dubbed Orphan Sunday. In an effort to equip churches for a response, GlobalFingerprints will be providing resources for churches to begin acting in this drama of the gospel.
If you'd like to partner with GlobalFingerprints in the Global Orphan Crisis, you can start by sponsoring the education, healthcare, and discipleship of a child in need for $25/month.