It seems as though I've listened to lots of stories about children's dreams recently as I drove around the area. Or perhaps I'm hearing what was so often there...
As far away as an ocean and a continent, as close as tears.
A high school student in a Chicago ghetto, dreaming of attending college on a scholarship, an innocent bystander gunned down as he walked home a few weeks ago.
A Russian boy penning notes in a diary -- fantasies of bread and candy and potatoes as he starved in the siege of Leningrad during World War II.
Children in a Washington charter school, wondering what it would be like if beating them up wasn't way of initiating members into a D.C. gang.
Though no area is totally safe from violence, my kids by and large don't have to worry about being shot on the way to school.
They have enough to eat -- a lot more than enough. "Remember families tonight who are praying for food" said the leader of a local youth group, as he took the sixth and seventh graders out on a local food tour, from McDonald's to Dairy Queen to the WaWa.
These children are wanting what so many of us simply take for granted.
And don't they deserve it as much as our children?
To whom much is given, much is required -- that's what Jesus said to his followers.
I happen to believe that children's dreams are sacred-- whether they are those of immigrants or rural Southerners or the mostly white, Indian and Asian kids who live near us. What do you believe?
And, more to the point, what can we (I, you) do to help other's people children survive long enough to enroll in that college, attend that prom, find the right dress for the job...or have a slice of bread without the bombs falling, and the sirens blaring and the brutal murder of hope.
No child deserves that -- do they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt-IBJpEMzA
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