I'd like to introduce you to

Abel.

Abel is the latest addition to my "family."  I wrote in my last post about how my mindset is changing.  I want to elaborate more on that.  I was doing some prayer, prompted by my reading of Francis Chan's Crazy Love, asking G-d to help me vote for the man He thinks is the best leader of America.  That particular prayer actually has very little to do with anything Chan has to say, but bear with me.  But that's okay, because G-d's answer has very little to do with my prayer.  The immediate response I got back was:

"I think abortion should be stopped."

This definitely caught me off guard, because, until 3.5 hours ago, that was not my opinion.  So, I started praying some more, and fell asleep, but, when I woke up, I was overcome with the notion of how a sacrifice isn't really a sacrifice if you're not sacrificing.

So I started thinking about that, and I realized that my income has increased considerably, but my giving has not.  My immediate response was that I needed to sponsor another Compassion child.  As soon as I got home, I popped on Compassion's website, and began scrolling through the first page of kids, overwhelmed, and, once again all but in tears attempting to decide which one.  Who is it that actually is going to get their needs cared for?  Oh, how well the devil knows me.  He knows that that tiny whisper is almost always enough to chase me away from that page.  And it almost did tonight, too.

At the bottom of the page was Abel.  He was the only kid on that page to be denoted as a child who had been waiting for over six months for a sponsor (193 days, to be exact) - indication 1.  He lives in Peru and speaks Spanish - indication 2.  I all but threw up and burst into tears when I scrolled on to the next page - indication 3.

I threw on the brakes and turned the car around.  Abel's wait was over.

It didn't occur to me until half an hour ago how truly fitting this sponsorship is.  Abel.  Abel is the child I'm choosing to sponsor as an act of sacrifice to G-d.  Abel is the child whose name alone will keep me reflecting on the act of dying to self.  Abel is the child who is named after a man who did what was right in the eyes of the L-RD, even at the cost of his own life.  Abel is the child who will inspire me, simply by having his own name, to draw back to G-d.

G-d works in the most mysterious ways.  Praise be to G-d.