More Steve Goodier
There are few
things in this life more difficult to experience
than the loss of one's child. Jim Wallis, in WHO
SPEAKS FOR GOD tells about a sad and terrifying
incident that occurred during the tragic war in
Sarajevo not too many years back. A reporter who
was covering the violence in the middle of the
city saw a little girl fatally shot by a sniper.
The reporter threw down his pad and pencil and
rushed to the aid of a man who was now holding
the child. He helped them both into his car and
sped off to a hospital.
"Hurry, my friend," the man urged, "my child is
still alive." A moment or two later he pleaded,
"Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing."
A little later he said, "Hurry, my friend, my
child is still warm."
When they got to the hospital, the young girl
was gone. "This is a terrible task for me," the
distraught man said to the reporter. "I must go
tell her father that his child is dead. He will
be
heartbroken."
The reporter was amazed. He looked at the
grieving man and said, "I thought she was YOUR
child."
The man replied, "No, but aren't they all our
children?"
I think that is one of the great questions of
our age. Aren't they all our children? It is a
question that deserves an answer.
Aren't they all our children? Those who live
under our roof and those who reside with another
family? Those to whom we are related as well as
those we have never known?
Aren't they all our children? Those on our side
of the border as well as those on the other
side? Those of our nation no more or less than
those of another?
Aren't they all our children? Those who worship
like us and those who worship differently? Those
who look like us and those who do not?
Aren't they all our children? The well-educated
and the
under-educated? The well-fed and the under-fed?
Those who are secure and those who are at risk?
Aren't they all our children? The highly valued
and highly esteemed as well as the castaways and
the lost?
Aren't they all our children? Aren't they all
our responsibility? ALL of them? Ours to
nurture? Ours to protect? Ours to love?
I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that
the survival of our world hinges on the answer
to that question.
To say they are NOT all our children is to
condemn the world to more struggle – family
against family, group against group, nation
against nation.
Aren't they all our children? If we say yes, can
we ever again pit
them against each other? "If we have no peace,"
said Mother Teresa, "it is because we have
forgotten that we belong to each other."
Aren't they all our children?
There may be no greater question for our
generation. And how we answer that question will
determine the shape of our world for years to
come.
