World AIDS Day. Today. Everyday.
How many? Millions. Each precious.
Where? Everywhere. Hidden. Mostly scared and shamed into silence.
Who is there for them? We are. Each one of us is connected - in some way with a person with HIV.
As a family, we have lost a cousin to AIDS. He died this year. Silently.
How many more are going to die before we are able to roll back this disease?
What will it take for us to change our selfish, pleasure-at-all-costs, me-first nature?
Two millennia ago - a man who did no wrong was stretched out on a rude piece of wood. Alive, he had his hands and feet hammered in. For each one of us. For each brother and sister with HIV. Stripped of his few clothes he had - he hung their naked. He was spit on and abused by thieves and religious teachers alike. And yet he said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." Instead of revenge, he took on their shame - all of our shame. He hung there in pain for our sakes.
The story doesn't end at that brutal execution. It continues in a garden where the spat-on corpse had been laid. On the third day it wasn't there any more. Jesus had beaten death. He was, is and always will be - totally, invincibly, for-ever alive.
Today is World AIDS Day. Every day is World AIDS Day.
In a time of death and shame - we see the first rays of the coming light.
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