can to save a child. Even if we don’t happen to
personally know of a child who is in desperate
need of love and support, we can rest assured
there are children who are in dire circumstances and need at minimum our prayers. We
can never know if a child lost to the streets,
incarceration or an early grave might have
been one God had chosen to do something
great to bless His people.
Just imagine for a moment if Stanley Ann Durham had failed to live up to her
responsibility because she was a single parent
or because parenting was hard. According
to author, Janny Scott, who wrote Durham’s
biography, “A Singular Woman,” President
Obama is quoted as saying as he reflected
on his mother, “a sense of unconditional love
that was big enough that, with all the surface
disturbances of our lives, it sustained me,
entirely.” Durham also believed in the importance of education and although it took her
two decades to complete, was awarded her
Ph.D. in anthropology. She had also instilled
in her son the importance of education, making him rise before the sun came up to do his
homework and would tell people that her son
was gifted, “that he can do anything he ever
wants in the world, even be president of the
United States.”
Was her statement prophetic or a
promise? I would say both. Proverbs 18:21
tells us life and death is in the power of the
tongue. By nurturing her son with love and
instilling the virtues he needed to be a caring
human being, and then speaking life over him
and their situation, Durham helped to shape
President Obama’s destiny and legacy—using
the power she had to change the world.
Each of us is charged with doing the
same. It’s a responsibility we shouldn’t take
lightly and should pursue with every fiber in
our being.
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