Gay-Christians.org

I’m not saying that to be smart.  I am simply asking it because although we get confused as Christians when differentiating between Bingo for a fundraising event or Sweepstakes for a cause and even a trip to Atlantic City sponsored by your parish. When do you consider any of it as gambling? Aren’t all of it a game of chance?

It’s funny because I heard about this new craze where you can play Sweepstakes via SMS now. Have you heard that? You send a text message (you can play as much as you want, just know that each text message will cost you) and a winner is declared for each *th player. It could be the 100th or the 861st as the winner but each one has a different prize. If you want to see what this Sweepstakes have to offer, just visit the site at SMSnia.com and preview the prizes that they are offering. You can choose any sweepstakes you would like to participate in and all you do is send a text message to participate. You have to confirm that you sent the text message by sending a Y back to know that you agree to pay the fee to send in your bet.

Technology has really taken us all beyond our imagination. I can’t even think of what people did without cell phones way back then. Today, if your wife goes shopping for groceries and you realized that you’re also out of milk and it’s not on the list, you just pick up the phone and call her on her cell to let her know and voila!, you have milk when she gets home.

Now, it’s texting to win prizes? Wow! What could be next?

My friends and I started to make our way to churches on Good Friday to go through the 14 Stations of the Cross.  Traditionally, I heard that this practice is done on Holy Thursday, and you actually visit 14 churches on foot.  One church for each station.

Although the churches are close together here in my neighborhood, it may still be a little chilly at the time Good Friday rolls around and walking it may not be such a good idea.  We usually go through seven churches, reading two stations at each church.  Then we all end up in Chinatown in Philly for lunch.

It has become a fun tradition and friends are actually excited about it.  They call me and ask if we are already scheduled for the “Annual Visita Iglesia”.  That just reminds me, I need to take the day off on April 10.

It is called one of the worst years in the Soviet Union. During 1932-1933, Joseph Stalin had designed a policy for Industrialization. The Communist governments at the time, had taken the grains from the peasants and exported most of the Republic’s grains to the west causing “Mass or Great Hunger” in the region. It has been estimated that approximately 6-8 million peasants had died during that year which is now being termed as holodomor instead of Golodomor liking it to the Holocaust.

They are now questioning whether the act was an act of genocide. There is a big debate about it in the European Union on whether it is to be considered a genocidal famine yet it cannot be proven because of attempts by the nationalists to alter historical facts. To tell you the truth, this is the first time I’ve heard of it. Unfortunately, things like this occur somewhere in the globe even today.

There is still a lot that I don’t know and it saddens me that governments allow these things to happen. They turn on a blind-eye and proceed to do such things for personal gain.  What can we do as Christians to prevent these?  I know that as bloggers, we now have to power to print something to let the world know of truths that occur around us.  We should all act as reporters and use the blogging medium to reveal human rights violations anywhere.  We have to do our part.  WE NEED TO HAVE OUR VOICE HEARD.