CAN'T HUG THE NEEDY WITH WEAPONS FOR ARMS

 “For the first time, the United Nations is handling four major humanitarian crises at once: refugee crises in Syria and Iraq as well as civil wars in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, where millions are at risk of famine. Meanwhile, West Africa is experience a devastating Ebola outbreak.”

And this is on top of “ongoing needs that are being met in Nigeria, Gaza, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the emerging crisis in Ukraine," says an administrator of our USAID programs.  She adds this is unprecedented in the scope of worldwide disaster responses, and extraordinarily complicated—much more than last year’s hurricane in the Philippines, where, “Nobody was shooting anyone.”

This NPR report was on August 19^th this year [you can find online at NPR Morning Edition], and things are not getting better.   Our humanitarian efforts are beaten back by a world awash in weapons and violence.   The failed third world states are overwhelming us with their wounds of war.   The Ebola virus in Liberia and Sierra Leone wells up within a people who’ve been subjected to a bloodbath of fighting for decades.  We are becoming the failed superpower states—the first-world countries who’ve relied on, and exported, war industries to solve international conflicts.

                                                                Sermon on the Mount -- Hope for Africa

Our world leaders base their investment, politics, and security on military power. This terribly mistaken idea, that one can bludgeon the enemy into submission and peace, has plagued humanity for millennia, before the birth of Christ.  He preached from the mountaintops the Beatitudes—love of enemy was the only way to salvation and true security.  Many governments since have professed respect for Christianity, but put their money down on the war machine.   Yet the only guaranteed wages of war are continued sin, disease, and death.

We’ve been so blessed in the United States.  We reach a turning point.  God grant us the grace to change our hearts, then open our purses investing completely in the healing way of the peacemaker.

Graph of world's disastrous response to conflict thus far - from globalissues.org

 More complete info & graphs on the trillion dollar arms industry at last 2 sites below

References

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/19/341413632/worlds-aid-agencies-stretched-to-their-limits-by-simultaneous-crises

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R42678.pdf

http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business#Developingnationsaretoprecipients

Here's the only image of St. Michael I can find without a sword [from St. Michael the Archangel Orthodox Chruch in Concord, CA].   Happy Michaelmas Day -- the 29th was celebrated in Europe as a feast of the harvest.  Michael is "a star of the love that conquers pride," and means in Hebrew--who is like to God?