Sometimes we forget that in each and every nation in the world there are children who experience all the wonderful or terrible things that happen each day.
In Nigeria, children starve and watch their parents and siblings die because they don't have enough food to eat or clean water to drink. Children in Nigeria starve each day.
In the US children are subjected to countless marketing molestations, we call advertisements, each day; telling them they are too fat or too skinny, or that they need this toy to live, or must start smoking if they want to be cool. Children in the US are expert consumers.
In Palestine children play futbol in formerly lush olive tree groves that have been demolished by Israeli construction teams and bounce their futbols off the 27ft. tall walls that surround many Palestinian cities, under the trained eye of Israeli snipers. Children in the Gaza Strip now go to bed each night listening to the lullaby of bomb blasts--some which kill their friends. Children in Palestine are prisoners in their homes.
Children in Uganda are routinely kidnapped and forced to kill and rape other children. Children in Uganda are murderers.
So too in Northern Ireland children are subjected to hate ridden fear of the other--the Protestant, the Catholic. Children in Northern Ireland have seen people gunned down on the streets because of what Christian denomination they adhere to. Children in Northern Ireland are sectarian and fearful.
A child’s innocence is worth dying for. A child’s innocence should never, never be taken from them.
Yet, all around the world, in Nigeria and the US and Palestine and Uganda and Northern Ireland children dance and grin and walk through life with hope and love. Only if we could approach life and God like a child does.
A child's innocence--what a wonderful thing.
The included pictures were taken while we were in Northern Ireland.
,Adam
