abelungu bayasho bathi selidumela emansumpeni. laleli selidumela khona. but on a more serious note, is your church prepared at leadership level for AIDS? Any growing church may find people with HIV as members as a result of previous lifestyles. For example, in Central and Eastern Europe, many churches are involved in drug rehabilitation eg Ukraine and Russia, and some churches have several hundred former drug-users in their congregations, of which up to 70% have HIV.
People with AIDS can be very sensitive to reactions, whether they will be aaccepted or rejected. A person can swing rapidly from anger, to denial, sadness, despair, hope, optimism, questioning, resignation, fighting, giving up, wanting active treatment, or even wanting to die.
What is needed is sensitivity to where the person is today, helping the person understand that in the midst of great uncertainties about the future, your own constant support and friendship is not in doubt, just as God's faithfulness and love is not in doubt.
With love bazwalane bami, we can conquer even the highest mountains. Together we can do it. The peace of God be with you.
Friday, July 31, 2009
condoms are not the answer
It would be such a shame to talk about AIDS and sex without addressing the issue of condoms. Sure, I talked about them earlier, but now I am serious. It is a fact that if everyone kept to just one partner for life, and ceased injecting drugs, HIV would be wiped off the face of this earth. It is also true that continuing without restraint over the same period could cost countless lives. Condoms are an incomplete answer other than reducing the risk in the short term.
Are governments honestly expecting a couple where one or other may have been at risk to go on using condoms for the next 50 years ? What happens when they want to have children or when the condom breaks, leaks, falls off or fails in some other way? Pregnancy rates are notoriously high with condoms. So bazwalane bami, abstinence and faithfulness is the only way forward, just as God ordained in His word. Let’s choose life and live.
Are governments honestly expecting a couple where one or other may have been at risk to go on using condoms for the next 50 years ? What happens when they want to have children or when the condom breaks, leaks, falls off or fails in some other way? Pregnancy rates are notoriously high with condoms. So bazwalane bami, abstinence and faithfulness is the only way forward, just as God ordained in His word. Let’s choose life and live.
What next?
I often think of people with AIDS today, many dying without hope and without God, and I imagine our heavenly father, with tears pouring down his face, not wanting any to perish.
Those with AIDS are the lepers of today. When Jesus touched the leper he made history - still talked about 2000 years later. It was a powerful demo of the love of God bazalwane. Jesus has no body of his own, we the church are his body. We are his hands, his feet, his smile, his voice, his heart, his touch and we should be unto the sick as Jesus was unto the leper.
The only part of God that people see could be the life of Jesus in you or me. As we go into the home, and give someone a hug, or take someone's hand we too are making a little bit of history in our own way. And that is matters to God if we can bring his love into the lives of real people like you and me.
Those with AIDS are the lepers of today. When Jesus touched the leper he made history - still talked about 2000 years later. It was a powerful demo of the love of God bazalwane. Jesus has no body of his own, we the church are his body. We are his hands, his feet, his smile, his voice, his heart, his touch and we should be unto the sick as Jesus was unto the leper.
The only part of God that people see could be the life of Jesus in you or me. As we go into the home, and give someone a hug, or take someone's hand we too are making a little bit of history in our own way. And that is matters to God if we can bring his love into the lives of real people like you and me.
so how do we live with AIDS
The way of Jesus is clear: a Christian AIDS response means we are called to express the unconditional love of God to all in need regardless of how they come to be so. Yikho esikubizelweyo bazwalane. This is the practical aspect to Christianity.
If one is seriously hurt in a car crash rush to help. We don’t walk away just because the person was drunk and that is why there was an accident. Nor do we start preaching an anti-drunkenness sermon in the ambulance or on the ward..
With those affected by HIV/AIDS we are called to be helpful, to care and express love. The church has to act, seeking always to serve others. We are there as servants of the Most High, yena ophakemeyo.
If one is seriously hurt in a car crash rush to help. We don’t walk away just because the person was drunk and that is why there was an accident. Nor do we start preaching an anti-drunkenness sermon in the ambulance or on the ward..
With those affected by HIV/AIDS we are called to be helpful, to care and express love. The church has to act, seeking always to serve others. We are there as servants of the Most High, yena ophakemeyo.
THE RIGHTFUL PLACE OF SEXXXXXXXXXXX
SURE AM TALKING ABOUT SEX!!! Its surprising the way we can be confused at times when the bible is clear about sex. The teaching of scripture from Genesis to Revelation is constant regarding the wonderful gift of sex union, as a celebration of love and friendship between a man and woman committed together for life. God loves sex, it's the waste of sex outside marriage that God hates. The bible is far more daring and explicit than our sermons on sex, making clear that all sex union outside marriage is wrong.
Sex is shown to be a mystery, a spiritual event when two become "one flesh". We see the physical side of this whenever a sperm fuses with an egg. Half a cell from a woman fuses with half a cell from a man to form literally one flesh: a new unique individual full of future personality and identity.
So bazwalane, its not me, and this is very Godly stuff, its time the church spoke openly about sex if we are to be real about addressing AIDS.
Sex is shown to be a mystery, a spiritual event when two become "one flesh". We see the physical side of this whenever a sperm fuses with an egg. Half a cell from a woman fuses with half a cell from a man to form literally one flesh: a new unique individual full of future personality and identity.
So bazwalane, its not me, and this is very Godly stuff, its time the church spoke openly about sex if we are to be real about addressing AIDS.
THE RIGHTFUL PLACE OF SEXXXXXXXXXXX
SURE AM TALKING ABOUT SEX!!! Its surprising the way we can be confused at times when the bible is clear about sex. The teaching of scripture from Genesis to Revelation is constant regarding the wonderful gift of sex union, as a celebration of love and friendship between a man and woman committed together for life. God loves sex, it's the waste of sex outside marriage that God hates. The bible is far more daring and explicit than our sermons on sex, making clear that all sex union outside marriage is wrong.
Sex is shown to be a mystery, a spiritual event when two become "one flesh". We see the physical side of this whenever a sperm fuses with an egg. Half a cell from a woman fuses with half a cell from a man to form literally one flesh: a new unique individual full of future personality and identity.
So bazwalane, its not me, and this is very Godly stuff, its time the church spoke openly about sex if we are to be real about addressing AIDS.
Sex is shown to be a mystery, a spiritual event when two become "one flesh". We see the physical side of this whenever a sperm fuses with an egg. Half a cell from a woman fuses with half a cell from a man to form literally one flesh: a new unique individual full of future personality and identity.
So bazwalane, its not me, and this is very Godly stuff, its time the church spoke openly about sex if we are to be real about addressing AIDS.
what would Jrsus do?
Take the example of Jesus with the woman caught in the act of adultery - really the story of the missing man . This bunch of angry men was looking for an excuse to stone the poor confused woman, yet it takes two to tango and the man was nowhere to be seen. In Jesus' day there were levels of sin: woman sex sin punished by death, other sin was more or less acceptable, while man sex sin was hardly worth fussing about.
Jesus hated their double standards and hypocrisy. He dismissed them with just one sentence: "If any one of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her" This calls for you as an individual mzwalane ukuba uzinuke amakhwapha. All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory all are utterly dead outside of God's grace Jesus was the only person on this earth who had the right to condemn yet he says to the woman "neither do I condemn you". He also adds "go now and leave your life of sin".
Jesus hated their double standards and hypocrisy. He dismissed them with just one sentence: "If any one of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her" This calls for you as an individual mzwalane ukuba uzinuke amakhwapha. All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory all are utterly dead outside of God's grace Jesus was the only person on this earth who had the right to condemn yet he says to the woman "neither do I condemn you". He also adds "go now and leave your life of sin".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
