Article September 30, 1996 Issue

Cherishing the world's children

Harriet Barry Schupp

Their faces speak to us, the faces of the world's children portrayed in news reports and on magazine covers. Often they are the faces of children involved in tragedies that no one should ever have to experience. What can we do when we long to heal these children's hurts, to save them from abusive situations, and to rescue them from the wars and famines of the world's making?

We can more deeply cherish the qualities of purity and innocency, which are inherent in children, and, actually, in all of us—qualities from God. These are qualities that the world does not seem to value. Providing a supportive environment for the development and protection of these qualities in children is not generally a priority in society. The simple, pure child thought, instead of being valued as a strength, is more often associated with vulnerability.

But the qualities that make up childlike thought—innocence, purity, trust, and spontaneity—are not weak and vulnerable. They are the very expression of God revealing Himself to mankind. They carry with them the power and reality of their divine source. Hatred, evil, anger, crudity, sensualism, have no source in God or Truth and thus no power to overrule the nature of God expressed in man.

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