U.S. AIDS Funding Program Started Under Bush Credited With Saving Millions

From Fox News.

In the past 10 years, HIV infections have dropped by 20 percent. Medical experts say the combination of new treatments and a greater focus on prevention has been a success story.

But, according to specialists in the field and AIDS activists alike, in sub-Saharan Africa — where efforts on raising awareness and relief is credited with saving 5 million lives — the game changer has come as a direct result of massive U.S. funding that began in 2003.

While support for the funding has been bipartisan, U2’s lead singer and world-renowned humanitarian Bono credits former President George W. Bush with leading the charge on the issue.

Good for him and good for the people that have been helped. Read it all.

Advent Meditation

From Anglican Mainstream.

We live in an age of terror where the simple idea of transporting oneself in public can be a matter of life and death. We live in a day when families seek to beat each other into submission of matters of money and estates. We live in a time when church fragmentation is perfected instead of the unity it is called to uphold and preserve. When you consider that this is the norm for the Christian in the 21st Century, one does take pause to consider the first lesson appointed for today.

Engage the meditation.

Augustine: The Mystery of God’s Providence

See today’s reflection below.

Some desire to have children and can’t have them; others don’t want children but can’t seem to avoid them. Why is it that those of modest means are lavish in their gift-giving while misers horde their hidden treasure? Why is it that some of the rich waste their ample inheritance on trifles while the weeping beggar hardly gets a coin all day? Why is it that the undeserving are honored while those who live blameless lives are ignored by the crowd? These and other things in human life cause some humans to believe the world is not governed by Divine Providence. Others who cannot believe they have been abandoned by God are so confused by the chaos of the world that it is hard for them to see any order in it.

On Order, 2.5.14-15

Why Read the Bible: To Help Us Cope with Adversity

How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

–Psalm 13 (NIV)

We continue to look at reasons for reading the Bible seriously. Today we look at the sometimes vexing problem of evil and suffering. Notice carefully the psalmist does not ask why he has sorrow on his heart, why he has to wrestle with his thoughts, or why his enemies have triumphed over him. No, instead the psalmist asks God to deliver him from the evil that has befallen him. He makes it clear he trusts God and notice carefully that he does not make his trust conditional on God answering his prayer in the way the psalmist would like.

The Bible does not tell us why God allows evil to exist–why, for example, God allowed it to enter the paradise of Eden (in the form of the serpent) in the first place. Scripture simply acknowledges that evil exists. But in passages like today’s psalm, we also see Scripture telling us, albeit implicitly, that God has and will do something about it and this is where many of us have a problem with what Scripture says because it does not answer our “why” questions or provide us answers that we find satisfactory.

What Scripture essentially tells us about evil is this. While we do not know why God allows it to exist, we are called to have faith in God and trust that he is dealing with it in this life and will deal with it decisively at Christ’s Second Coming when he brings about the New Creation (see, e.g., Revelation 21-22). Therefore, we are told not to let evil overcome us, to respond to evil with good (see, e.g., Luke 6.27; Romans 12.17-21).

This, of course, requires that we have a real faith in God and a concept of him that is big enough to handle the problem of evil. If we don’t think God really cares about us or is big enough to handle evil, then we will likely take matters into our own hands when confronted with evil–and we all know how well that works. Just look at the intractable problems in Middle East if you need an example to see how effective human solutions are. That is why, for example, the lex talionis in Exodus 21:22-25 prohibits retaliation that is escalatory (not an eye for an eye but only an eye for an eye, only a tooth for a tooth, etc.).

Instead, Scripture calls for us to trust in God, to believe that he is in control even in the most dire of circumstances, and that in the cross of Christ, God has defeated evil decisively (see, e.g., Colossians 2.15). The outworking of this is not yet complete or entirely obvious, but it is Scripture’s answer to what God has done about evil and we are called to accept it by faith and trust God to work out his good plan and design for us and his creation.

We cannot have the kind of trust this demands if we do not really know God or have only a casual relationship with him. That is why we need to learn about God’s good desires for us in the Bible so that we can worship the One True God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is why we really do need to count our blessings in the face of suffering and sorrow, so that we remind ourselves that God has not utterly abandoned us. (I am personally persuaded that this world would be utter chaos and madness if it weren’t for God working in it.) This is why we need to have trusted Christian friends and family to whom we can turn when we are beaten down so that God can use those friendships to remind us of his love for us manifested in the love of our friends.

None of this may seem totally satisfactory to us, at least on a purely intellectual level, but life is not lived on a purely intellectual basis and this is what Scripture tells us that God desires from us in regard to our response to the problem of suffering and evil. If we reject his counsel, we are essentially putting ourselves in judgment over God rather than submitting to his sovereignty over us.

In other words, we are essentially saying that we know better than God.

The next time you are tempted to do that, ask yourself this question. Can I raise myself from the dead? Can I give myself new life? Can I heal all that is wrong with me and others? Has self-help really solved all my problems? When you can answer “yes” to any of these questions (let alone all of  them), then by all means go ahead and put yourself in judgment over God and his will for how you and the rest of his creatures should respond to him. Until that time, however, we will be wise to put our whole hope and trust in the One who can raise us from the dead and give us new life.