Africa-Press – Tanzania. ON Friday, Tanzanian Christians joined their fellow Christians across the world to celebrate Christmas, which went quite well, at least in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.
No threatening incident to the health, safety or welfare of the people in both parts of the United Republic of Tanzania starting from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day and even yesterday had been reported.
During celebrations various religious leaders preached, among other things, about love, peace, justice and parental care. The latter theme was especially stressed by Bishop John Mchopa during his homily at the Bible Church of Tanzania in Mtwara Region, where Christmas was celebrated at national level. Mtwara Regional Commissioner Gelasius Byakanwa also emphasised it.
Recalling the nativity of Jesus and how his parents Joseph and Mary looked after him, Bishop Mchopa said some children in our society lacked requisite parental care and were, therefore, vulnerable to assault, abuse and sometimes were killed by their own relatives.
He cited street children, who because of life circumstances, wandered the streets and in urban areas begging for money and food and were sometimes be subjected to abuse.
We want to go back to this point of parental care because it is very important especially nowadays when most children are left in the hands of domestic workers as parents or guardians go to work from morning to evening or night and have only little or no time at all to be with their children.
In the circumstances, children grow up without good upbringing and would only depend on the help of teachers for those who go to school or peer pressure for those who don’t. Moral decadence, which is often complained about by many people, is partly a result of this type of upbringing.
So, being busy as we are in trying to earn a living and make ends meet, we must as well spare some time to spend with our children home who often miss our love and care and because of what they are they cannot raise their voices to say what they miss from their parents, guardians or close relatives.
Essentially, what we can say is that we are caught up in between the duty to work or earn a living and look after the children God has blessed us with which will be a grave sin to leave them without parental care.
It suffices to remind ourselves the responsibility we have to our children as we approach the New Year 2021, which calls us to make resolute decisions on what we want to improve and achieve in life.
Let us take time to reflect on how much we miss our own children or how much our children miss us and rectify it lest we instead of looking after them we leave them to look after themselves. So, let us do something about it!
