No Matter What

One Year Later... I am STILL very sad...to share about the loss of one of my Sudanese friends. David Dut Agaar died tragically in the city of Pittsburgh on January 29th. David was only 23 years old. He died on a street in the uptown section of the city at the hands of a thief who had absolutely no value for human life. Let me just share a little bit about David.

You may be aware that approximately six years ago, thousands of Sudanese young men started the journey of resettlement to U.S. cities. You have probably heard some of their horrific stories. David (with many other Sudanese young boys) fled Sudan at an early age to escape being brutally killed. The civil war in Sudan had taken the lives of over 2 million innocent men, women, and children. They fled to Ethiopia only to be caught in the crossfire of an escalating civil war. Their journey back to Sudan could be described as a death march as many lives were lost along the way. This was a terrible and almost indescribable tragedy.

I am sad to say that many are still losing their lives in the Western Darfur region of Sudan and along the southern border with Uganda. Men are killed; woman and children are beaten, raped, and taken into slavery. This all too familiar scenario is the backdrop by which many refugees are resettled to the U.S. We are supposed to have a safe and free nation. There are many positive things about living in the U.S., but we must not turn our backs on the injustice.

David came to the U.S. with the hope of a better life. He graduated from High School in Philadelphia and moved to Pittsburgh to be with friends and enroll in the Art Institute. I know he had dreams of a bright future. That all ended five days ago. I have absolutely no idea how one person can so senselessly take the life of another. What I do know is that we live in a nation where many citizens do not value human life. We don't value the poor! We don't value the homeless! We don't value the infirmed! We don't value the disabled! We don't value the unborn! We do not value the refugee! We have created a culture that says certain people are more important than others.

We then wonder why an individual will open fire on innocent people at a postal facility; or why teenagers would beat a homeless person to death; or why two people who think society owes them something, would try to take it by force resulting in the death of our friend David Agaar. A free society is not free and certainly not safe unless it is able to take care of it's most vulnerable. Currently, we are not doing a very good job. My prayer is that people of faith would stand strong for life and make a contribution that would reverse our present course. ...Craig