A father offers to sell his child in India—What might we do? ABC News ran a special last month detailing the plight of a poor family whose one child needed an operation they could not afford. The 45 year old father of a 16 year old girl (lower right) who needed a heart operation decided to sell his “only asset” saying, “I want to get my daughter operated upon, but I have no money. This is why I have put up my son for sale,” Rajak told NDTV, an Indian news channel in April. In our country, the announcement of such a decision would immediately bring about involvement from children’s protection authorities, the removal of all children from the home, and provide medical care for the girl. India, however, is a very poor country without social safety nets and this father faced a problem that millions of poor face in India. Do we eat today or do we sleep in the street? How sick do we need to be before we try to see a doctor and how do we pay the cost? Because of the broadcast of this man’s plight, donations arrived to cover the cost of his daughter’s surgery. His son was saved from the widely used “child labor” farms where children work until they pay off debts owed by their parents. This month in Haiti, hunger has become so severe that many eat dirt cakes as their only meal. One women was seen speaking to a reporter with her four small children in front of her. She offered him one of them if he would only feed her child. There were periods in Israel’s history where, besieged by invaders, people starved and were forced into slavery and beggary to survive. I don’t know what we might do in such a situation, but I can say that as believers, “he who is kind to the poor, lends to the Lord.” (Pr 19:17) As we do to the least of these, we are helping shine the light of hope and Christ into the lives of desperate people. May God help each of us as we face an increasingly difficult and unstable world.
