Why the Children?

I've been trying not to follow the news too closely this week, but the headlines and photos keep catching my eye. 

After so many years of relative quiet, peace in the Middle East has been shattered once again. War is awful in all the ways in all the times, near as I can tell, but surely, when one purposely targets the children, a new level of hell is created.

I can't unsee the images of the Israeli children taken as hostages. The image of a frightened baby, just into toddlerhood, being brandished like some sort of obscene trophy, by a man who seems to think such behavior is justified. Why????

I can't unsee the photo of the children of the Gaza Strip, caught up in a conflict they can't possibly understand. A middle-sized boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, standing in the courtyard of a 'safe' school, his younger sister held tightly in his arms, fearfully scanning the sky after the sound of warplanes was heard. Not purposely targeted, I hope, but from the look on his face, he knows he could easily be the collateral damage on tonight's news. 

And elsewhere in the world: A picture of a woman trying to negotiate a razor fence on the southern U.S. border, toddler clenched firmly in one arm, the baby's body just inches from the deadly edges of the wire. Sunday's lead story in the local paper, mercifully without photos, about a two year-old found dead just a couple of miles from my house, from fentanyl poisoning.

I look, and I cry tears of helpless rage and frustration. I want to gather each and every one of those innocents into my arms and hold them tight and tell them it was all just a bad dream. I know life is hard and cruel and not fair, but given all the wrong ways we treat each other, some of the wrongest ones are when we treat these precious lives as if they were used Kleenex. How can we not remember that when we destroy our children, we destroy our future?

Stop. Breathe.

I am angry because I am powerless. If I knew which direction to toss, I'd throw some money at the problems, hoping against hope my drop of help would join other drops to make a difference, but the roots of the actions which placed these children in such danger are so widespread and disparate that my drop would turn to mist and evaporate before it ever got into a bucket. 

So, I pray. Mostly because it's all I can think to do. I pray to the God I can't quite believe in. I can't find words to formulate the prayer, so I have to trust the Spirit to translate the cries of my heart.

Will you help the children? Please???