By Nicole Leeper | Communications
Cause: a principle, aim, or movement that, because of a deep commitment, one is prepared to defend or advocate.
Every October I remember… We see pink on everything. We see ribbons. We see football players with pink shoes. It is literally everywhere. Breast Cancer awareness and support. This is the cause.
It’s been 12 years since I lost my mother to breast cancer. Even before the cancer, she suffered from a neurological condition, Huntington’s Disease (HD). After her passing, in my mid-twenties, I visited a support group for HD carriers and family members. As I sat in this room of people who were all bound together by the common ground of suffering, I listened as they all explained with enthusiasm how they are spending their lives advocating on behalf of those who suffer from HD. One woman was putting herself through law school for the sole purpose of defending those with HD. She had a cause.
I was overwhelmed, as I thought, “Do I want to spend my life and breath for the purpose of fighting a disease?” In that moment, God gently moved upon my heart as He reminded me that my life should be fully and completely wrapped up in one eternal cause: The cause of Christ.
Since then, I have found myself helping with breast cancer events and sharing information about HD. I watch others minister to the elderly or to families who are loving a child with autism. I also now find myself with many others in orphan care ministry. Even in this, it is important not to lose focus on THE cause. We do not care for orphans simply because orphans need caring for, but because we are desperately in need of Christ, and it is in His cause that we find Him. Others are desperately in need of Christ, and so it is He who leads us to them.
God has called us all to the cause of the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the lonely, and the broken. These can be cancer patients, HD carriers, children from broken homes, elderly women who have lost their husbands, a friend in prison… Every human is in a broken condition without Christ. You may feel drawn more to one cause than another. Whatever your passion be, let the overarching banner you carry be the banner of Christ, for the cause of Christ.
“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14