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31st January 2011 by Shandri Brown

I am not usually a big cry-baby but January has messed with my head quite a bit. I spent an afternoon trying to catch up on all the flood-related information after being at Kingdom Come Conference the week that Queensland was getting washed away.

There was no other decent reaction than to have a big fat cry as I listened to horror stories of people watching their loved ones be swept away in the floods. It's crazy the things that these people have had to face and it makes my issues seem completely trivial. How selfish to care about a traffic jam when some people no longer have cars!

A lot of newspapers have been suggesting that people are quickly getting tired of hearing about the floods and the damage. It's called "compassion fatigue" – when we get exhausted from caring. It seems we get concerned for a small time and we feel really bad for people when they have lost everything and then we get on with our lives because after all who has the energy to stay sad for a long time? And how would our compassion help them anyway?

Yep, the tears dry up and we head out the door to school and to work and figure we will give it our attention again in a week or a month ... maybe when they air the anniversary special. It's kind of understandable (let's face it, I have often been in that place) but you know what ... It's just not good enough.

So what do I do when the shock dies down?

Well ... what would you want someone to do for you if you had lost absolutely everything? The people of the towns affected will be going through this tragedy for a long time, like a looong time and even though there has been great volunteer help right now, I feel pretty sure that over the next month or so those volunteers will start going back to their own families and jobs. Here's a couple of things that you can contribute:

Prayer: Put flood victims on the prayer agenda at your church.

Time: Organise a volunteer service project in the school holidays. Contact local churches in the coming months to find out where rebuilding needs to happen.

Money: Do you have a bit of dosh sitting in your sock drawer for a rainy day? Well guess what, that day has come. Maybe God blesses us with money to save so we can help when a need comes, and it doesn't have to be our own need. Donate it to the flood appeal, or even commit to sponsoring some young people from flood-affected towns to attend the same conferences you will be at this year.

Whatever you do, don't turn off the "care" button. Can you imagine if God got compassion fatigue? That would be a serious mess! Keep being moved peeps ... first your heart gets moved, then move your hands and feet.

By Shandri Brown

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1. 

   Pearl

   February 04, 2011 at 8:30pm

   challenging stuff

   Reply