Article September 29, 1986 Issue

Holding our children in God's love

ANN KENRICK

There seem to be increased threats to the safety of children all over the world. They are all too often the targets of violence and hatred motivated by the basest instincts of mankind.

Yet such cruelty is actually nothing new in the history of the human race. And we may be tempted to think there is little that one individual can do when faced with violent attacks on society's children. The Bible shows that, under God's direction, spiritually based wisdom can be exercised in a way that provides safety to the children and allows them to grow up to fulfill their potential.

A Bible story on this very theme appears in II Kings, chapter 11. Ahaziah, the sixth king of Judah, was killed suddenly during a violent uprising that broke out in the neighboring kingdom of Israel. The queen mother, Athaliah, decided that she would rule over Judah in Ahaziah's stead. She ordered all the young princes to be destroyed, but Ahaziah's half-sister, who was the wife of the high priest, took one of them, the baby Joash, and had him with his nurse right under the queen mother's nose in the temple, "the house of the Lord," for six years. (The queen mother was a worshiper of Baal.)

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