Gospel for Asia

Wills Point, Texas – GFA Special Report (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing why women are targets of abuse and discrimination, and why there is violence against the girl child. Geeta, a mother of two, lived in the slums and struggled to put food on the table every day with the meager 20 rupees her husband gave her. That amount equaled less than 50 cents at the time. In the evening, Geeta’s husband would come home drunk, having spent most of his earnings on alcohol. When she did not meet his expectations for dinner, he’d bring out whatever stick, rod or bat he could find and beat her in his drunken anger. What Geeta endured at the hands of her husband is the story countless women across Asia can share. The circumstances may be different, but the reality is the same. Throughout the centuries, women have silently suffered violence at the hands of their husbands who were supposed to love them, at the hands of their close and distant relatives who were supposed to care for them, and at the hand...

This unfortunate widow lost her husband to a tiger attack in Asia. I have this gnawing intuition that Mother’s Day might be utilized as a day to contribute positively and substantively to the plight of women worldwide. Originally, in fact, Mother’s Day was organized for just such a purpose. Started in 1908 by Anna Jarvis to honor her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, the daughter wanted to continue the work her mother had started. I have this gnawing intuition that Mother’s Day might be utilized as a day to contribute positively and substantively to the plight of women worldwide. Ann Reeves Jarvis had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. She had also created Mother’s Day Work Clubs to address public health issues and to teach local woman how to properly care for their children. In 1868 , Ann Reeves Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” where mothers gathered intentionally with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliat...

A young Indian woman happily poses with her newborn baby. I have decided that Mother’s Day has the potential to make as many women unhappy as it does to make them feel loved and revered. This realization hit me early in my marriage when I was a young mom with four wonderful, but often neglectful, kids. “The kids haven’t done anything for Mother’s Day!” I would complain to my husband. “You have to coach them,” I would explain. This was invariably answered by the proverbial husbandly defense, “But you’re not my mother!” David never really made the connection to the fact that his offspring recognized him on Father’s Day because I reminded them that Dad’s Day was on the calendar. (This in spite of the fact that David Mains is not my father.) Due to this yearly in-house male resistance, I finally figured to myself, Why am I making myself unhappy over this highly over-commercialized day anyway? (The National Retail Federation’s spending survey for Mother’s Day indicated that some $23.6 billi...