Here's a few practices that ICTG staff, directors, advisors, and colleagues have found most useful following human-caused disasters that occur far away:
- Spread love locally
- Gather together for prayer, singing, and lighting candles
- Spend this week expressing love to your loved ones
- Reach out to your neighbors with acts of goodness and kindness
- Extend acts of care to strangers you meet this week
- Spread love throughout the country and the world
- Call a loved one or an old friend you haven't talked to in awhile to share how much you still care
- Gather with family and friends to create preparedness kits or to create care kits for a nonprofit that collects them for sudden events like this one (a few examples, Ready.Gov, Red Cross, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance)
- Make a donation to your favorite nonprofit in honor of those who have died. Many denomination relief agencies are combining and sending monies together to help with foreign aid – give to your denomination's relief agency and make a greater impact. (If you don't know if your denomination has a relief agency, now is a great time to find out.)
- ICTG makes resources available online for ordained and lay ministers to access anywhere they have internet service. Further training also is available for ICTG Affiliates – like resource guides for ministers, youth ministers, and spiritual directors, and congregational assessment guides and response go lists. Today is a great day to become an ICTG Affiliate and start accessing these tools immediately.
With these acts you get involved in countering terror locally and globally. These acts make a difference. Be a blessing this week.