Twenty Children

l Iove Jane Stephens. She's smart, focused, and knows how to get things done. She founded the "Amani Children's Foundation" which does great work with abandoned children in Kenya. Stories of these children abound, but when I think of Jane I hear her singular refrain ringing in my ears, "It's about the babies."

"It's about the babies." How simple is that? In her work, she uses it to heighten the level of dialogue about what to do for Kenya's abandoned children. Historically these conversations have been mired in tribal conflicts, ethnic fears, and competing ideologies all while abandoned babies lay dying. One rescued baby I met was even abandoned in a tree, hanging in a plastic grocery bag as her cradle. Instead of obfuscating the issue by asking secondary questions "Was she Lua? Why doesn't the government do something? What kind of person abandons her baby?" Along comes Jane Stephens to remind us, "It's about the babies."

She's been remarkably successful. Her creative work with New Life Homes has now rescued hundreds of babies and facilitated their adoption across tribal lines, subjugating tribal differences to the common concern for children's welfare. Sometimes I wonder if Jane is less missionary and more prophet, a voice that cuts through the cultural noise and calls the question: Isn't this problem really about the children?

I wonder if her question isn't our nation's most urgent question. While ideologues and lobbyist, congresspersons and Presidents, dally around the edges, talking about the second amendment and crime rates, assault weapons and self-protection, I find myself saying, "Isn't it really about the children?" Isn't this really about creating a culture where the fundamental human right of children to attend school in safety is not superseded by the politically established 'right' of adults to bear arms? Isn't this about children being able to live and play freely without fear of massacre instead of living in a world that clings to the right to form militias? Isn't this about the children, none of whom should ever see a loved one shot at point blank range, attend mass funerals for schoolmates, and have their childhood traumatized by indiscriminate violence? Isn't this really about the children?

If an airliner filled with children fell out of the sky at the hands of a mentally ill pilot, we would take immediate steps to ensure future safety. We decided long ago that it was not in the interests of the community for someone to board an airplane unchecked, drive 200 miles an hour on a public highway, distribute medicine or even perform a wedding. We won't let a convicted sex-offender move into a neighborhood without public notice or come within two hundred feet of a playground, yet loopholes abound when it comes to criminals and the mentally ill possessing guns.

Christians have long understood the principle of subjugating the freedoms of some for the good of all. One of the Apostle Paul's earliest writings gives these new Christ-followers explicit instruction "For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servants of one another.”

In this case, the freedom of some to own semi-automatic assault weapons prevailed over the rights of twenty children to grow up, celebrate birthdays, enjoy God's good gift of life and to raise children of their own. Isn't it time to focus on the children?

In the book Profiles in Courage are stories about a handful of Americans who, at critical moments in history, made decisions that departed from their parties’ ideologies and ultimately cost them dearly. Of particular surprise to me was the story of Robert Taft, the staunchly conservative Republican senator from Ohio who publicly opposed the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. “The trial of the vanquished by the victor cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice,” Taft warned. Almost nobody agreed with him, and many think it cost him his party's nomination in the next election.

It's called courage, the courage of one's convictions, the willingness to do and say the right thing regardless of the consequences.
Isn't it time to do that for the children?