Someone asked me this week what I thought were the major humanitarian needs in Perth. I think the major humanitarian needs in Perth at the moment are all chronic needs: drug addiction; certain kinds of mental health illness; and the needs of sections of the indigenous community.
But beneath these surface tragedies are deeper calamities to do with human life: family strength, love and affection, broader caring networks, changes in values, the increasing individualisation of our life together. Associated with them are pragmatic things such as town planning policies, commercial greed that sets material above relationships, or as false means to strengthen relationship, and so on.
How best to respond? Or perhaps, at which of the many levels can we respond best? Comforting others with the comfort with which we have been comforted is a start. Acting politically. Giving money. Contributing skill or time. But with what aims?
Some of us will work toward big changes, others of us will make one change at a time. Helping one person at a time. Seeing individual lives transformed, or restored. Through the gospel, with God’s love, by his grace
Dale