Every so often something happens that causes us to stop and remember, that while as individuals we may get lost amongst the seven billion other people on the planet; ultimately we belong to a common family of other humans who are just like us. One such moment occurred on Wednesday 17th August when a small five-year-old boy, Omran Daqneesh, was pulled bloodied and dazed from the remains of his bombed out home in Aleppo, Syria.
Most of us who viewed his image will never meet Omran, but almost as one our hearts went out to him and his family, and the countless others whose lives have been lost and ruined by this senseless conflict. For a brief moment we suddenly felt responsible for this little boy and what was happening to him, and with all our hearts wanted things to be different. Why?
The apostle Paul, who suffered greatly at the hands of others, once used the analogy of the human body to explain the interconnectedness of Christians, and how when one part of the body suffers, every part suffers with it. The reason we care so much about Omran is that whether we follow Christ or not, we all reflect something of the image of God in which we were made, and for that reason while we may never meet him we love him as if he were a member of our own family.