I'm back on deck (woops, I'm using maritime terminology) after two weeks cruising around New Zealand. Although I was out of contact by phone, email or any other form of technology for two weeks, I have to say I did not miss it at all.
While the cruise provided us with some great experiences and some wonderful scenery there was one aspect of the trip that caused us to wonder.
One day the woman who cleaned our rooms on board the luxury cruise liner told me about her son who she hadn't seen for 10 months and her six month old daughter who she had never met. I was curious that she had not met her daughter.
It turned out that her sister in the Philippines was looking after her son and one day a baby girl was dropped at her doorstep in a box. "God gave me this little girl so I will look after it," she told me.
Such situations are not uncommon the Philippines, and someone who has been able to get work on a cruise ship is seen as being more financially secure than most.
Living for two weeks in the luxury of a cruise ship there was something incompatible about the story of child abandonment I was hearing from a woman who maintained her livelihood in "sail-in sail-out" employment.
According to the Abandoned Children's Fund there are more than 20 million homeless or abandoned children in the world today, many of them orphans.
Over the last two weeks I have had the opportunity to appreciate the wonder of God's creation, from the awesome thermal wonderland of Rotorua to the rugged glacier-formed fiords of Milford Sound. But I am thankful that in the midst of this I have been reminded of the vulnerability of human life and the precious gift of love that enables a young mother to take an abandoned child into her family.
This is the world in which we live, and for that I give thanks.
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