Who are the Orphans in Your Neighborhood?

I wrote this post a while ago but never posted it, today I thought I should send it out. :)

Who are the orphans in your neighborhood? in your neighborhood,they're in your neighborhood? Who are the orphans in your neighborhood, are they the people that you meet when you're walking down the street? They may be the people that you meet each day. (Okay, for you Mister Rogers people, I took a little bit of "creative" license with this song-sorry).

This is a question that has been on my heart for a while. By definition an orphan is "a child who has lost one or both parents by death". To be orphaned is "to be deprived of one or both parents."

Living in the midwest it feels as if there aren't very many orphans. But the more I think about this the more I see.

Our two older kids help at a Good News Club nearby where approximatley 40%(I don't remember the exact number) of the children have at least one parent in prison. Some of them are temporarily orphaned. I have good friends who, as adults, have seen both of their parents go home to be with the Lord. While they are adults, they sometimes feel like orphans; they don't have a parent to call for advice or wisdom. Foster children are orphaned for a time. Though they are placed with a loving foster family, they are our society's orphans for a time. For many reasons, there is an overwhelming number of single parents in our culture. Some of these children are missing either a father or a mother.

What is unique about each of these people? They have unique needs that we can all reach out to help with. How am I going to help? That is the question I wrestle with.

I think the first step is to pray. Ask the Lord how I can be of service to Him in these people's lives. We have a large family, our time is crowded, but it also means that we have many arms to reach out with. :) I don't think it is an issue of "if" we reach out, but "where" are we going to reach?