http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/24/indonesia.boy/#cnnSTCText
The above link is an article about a boy in Indonesia whose parents signed custody of him over to an orphanage so that they might give their son a better life. Can you imagine not being able to give your children the life you want for them? Can you imgaine wanting to give them a better life so badly that you're willing to give them up so that they might have that life? I bet that every parent who is forced to do that wonders if their kids will indeed have that much better of a life, or if one day they will be the same as them.
Children are this world's most valuable resource. They are more precious than platinum and more valuable than oil. Sadly they are not always treasured more than these things. There are people in wars using children as soldiers and human shields. There are people who abuse children, who neglect them, and some who sell them into slavery. And those children are never made to feel as though they hold the key to the future of this world.
I have read the same news stories you have. The ones about children being kidnapped, abused, neglected, killed, and manipulalated. And those stories make my heart ache. I'll admit right now that I love to watch CNN, I watch it before work in the mornings. And yesterday morning I watched a video clip of an eighteen-year-old putting an infant on an inflatable pillow and then jump on the pillow himself and send the baby sailing across the room. Thankfully the baby suffered no major injury, but as the doctor they interviewed stated, that child could have died. That eighteen-year-old is being charged, but what I want to know is how he knew he wasn't sending a future president of the United States sailing across the room? What right does he think he has to treat anyone, but especially a helpless infant, like that?! That child was depending on him for everything - and that child was failed.
Care about how you treat children, because you never know what future citizen of the world has been placed in your hands. Care. Care a lot - but if you don't care a lot, at least care a little bit.
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