April 13, 2006

There is an amazing essay at Jade Catherine’s site that is well worth reading. The link to her essay is here. This exerpt gave me pause to think:

There is an immense crisis in the world. Where does helping the miserable and the helpless fall in the priorities of Jesus’ people? If you go around churches and Christian circles and listen to what’s being discussed and watch what’s being done - what will that say about our priorities and our passion? What do we truly care about?

“He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.”
- Deut 10:18

When I entrusted my very sick body to the wonderful team at my local hospital (as I wrote about here), I didn’t think twice if they were clean or not. I was near death and frankly, it just wasn’t on the top of my mind. But as I’ve slowly recovered, I read an interesting article in the April 5th, 2005 Wall Street Journal entitled, “Hospitals Get Aggressive about Hand Washing”. I was surprised, to say the least, about what doesn’t happen to keep the bacteria out of the hospital. I had no idea that hospital infections themselves are a critical problem effecting patient care. Well isn’t that a bit disturbing! And it seems the simple act of handwashing can cut those infections in hospitals dramatically - but it works outside of hospitals just as well too.

Some of the statistics are interesting regarding hand washing and how amazingly effective this simple step is to keeping ourselves and others health. Read the rest of this entry »