Today I’m writing with my tears.
It’s not always good to write from a place of strong emotion, but for some reason, I’m compelled to say something. To offer a few words on behalf of a young life that has passed from this world with little more than an on-line epitaph that reads…
“Body of four-year-old missing boy found in a dryer”
In a dryer, friends.
A young life disposed of and temporarily hidden in a place designed for wet laundry, not for the fragile frame of his innocent understanding.
It shocks me, repulses me, angers me, and reminds me that I am living in the middle of a world’s evil. It’s extreme and callous, prevalent and intentional. This is just one story amongst thousands with enough “sensational” value to land it on the front page of an Internet search engine, alongside rumors of “Scientology fraud” and a “rare murder in Mayberry.”
More evil. More senseless acts of violence. More sin. More depravity. Have mercy. Is that all there is these days?
This seems to be the case, at least to a public without the eyes to vision beyond temporal atrocity. Everywhere we turn, everything we read, every news’ broadcast that anchors in our homes and via our computers is littered with the stories of evil and the depravity of humankind. Why?
Because evil sells. Evil roots at our deepest fears, and while our “senses” warn us to run away from the invading headlines, we sometimes cannot help but be drawn to the story. If we’re not careful, we enter into the story and, before long, our minds and our hearts are filled with thoughts that run contrary to what God desires.
True, we cannot turn a blind-eye to the problem of sin in our world. Evil speaks to the very reason of its contrast … God’s good. Evil sets the stage for a final showdown between heaven’s grace and hell’s determined intention for destruction. And while, as Christians, we know how that’s all going to flesh itself out one day, today I cannot help but wonder when that might be.
I’m ready for God’s final showdown. For an end to the enemy’s temporary “reign” upon this earth. I don’t want to read any more headlines regarding evil being perpetrated against God’s children, especially those who are unable to retaliate and who blindly trust their “elders” because God has created their young hearts for trust.
I don’t want child sex offenders to receive a “light sentence” because of their perceived “rights” in the matter. They gave up those rights when they made the decision to give into their depravity rather than seek help for their problems. Their excuses regarding their own depraved childhoods hold little water with me.
I’m not unsympathetic to their need to find resolution to their sin; I am, however, unsympathetic to them finding that resolution in a half-way house or group therapy session that sits within reach of a neighborhood school or playground. God’s grace can and does mediate its way behind prison doors—a controlled environment that sometimes better serves the cause of evil’s transformation (just ask my friend Mike, who spends a lot of time behind those closed doors dispensing God’s grace to the needy). Some soils are better left untouched by evil—protected and “out of reach” for the enemy’s intention.
I don’t want any more babies to be aborted in the name of a “mother’s rights” to her body. Our bodies are not our own. We were bought with a price; time to get on our knees and find our thanks for the fact that we’ve been given this moment in time, these few breaths to live our purpose on this earth, because our mothers better understood the value of their seeded womb. There is coming a day when every murdered child will have his/her day in court. The King will hear their cries, and if grace hasn’t been pled over the perpetrator’s heart, then God will exact a sentence in keeping with the crime.
I don’t want any more children to know the physical abuse and torture from adults who claim their “mental instability” as the culprit rather than calling abuse by the name is deserves—evil… sin. Those who decide that having “control” over their children allows them unlimited authority in the matter are those who have never sat under the authority of Jesus Christ. Children were not created for beatings, for the hammering out of our own “issues” upon and within their feeble flesh. Children were given to us as a blessing from God to be a blessing unto him.
No life arrives upon this soil without God’s planning; God’s notice; God’s love. None. Kids are not our mistakes. They are our treasures and are meant to experience their own walk of grace and discovery upon God’s earth. To think otherwise, is to cast our lots into the cradle of evil that births these heinous atrocities like water from a faucet.
Like a young girl being gang raped outside a high school dance while others stood by and did nothing.
Like a child being chained as a prisoner for years in her basement while giving birth to several children, fathered by her captor.
Like a young boy dying after being tied to a tree for days as a discipline strategy to get him to comply with parental rules and regulations.
Like an unborn baby being extracted from his mother’s womb prematurely to meet out a woman’s fantasy about being a “mother.”
Granted, these are extreme examples, but when children are diminished in the eyes of those who are charged with their keeping—with their “rearing” and their shaping—then intention plants a seed toward evil. And seeds of evil, when watered with years of neglect and a refusal to grow in a healthier understanding, eventually grow into a field of sin that harvests as tomorrow’s sensational headlines.
We must stop this, friends. All children of this world deserve better. They deserve our time and attention, our looking at them as our Father looks at them. Some of us are in the middle of our parenting years. Some of us on the backside of them. Some of us have never known the fruit of our own wombs. It makes no difference our “parenting” station in life. God’s children are meant for all of us. And I bet this day, there is a child within your circle of influence who could use your witness.
You prayers, your presence, your time, your gifts, and your wisdom that, in the end, will harvest toward kingdom gain rather than toward hell’s determined intention.
The only way that I know to combat this kind of evil in this present age is to invest my life in its contrast—in the lives of the children I’ve been given and in the lives of others who sit under my influence. Some of them are children. Some at other various stages in life. Regardless of ages, all of us are in need of a better response to the problem of evil in our world.
May the grace of the cross be the “rooting” that forces our contemplation in the matter and that leads us forward to make a change in our world. Any other “rooting” proffers little in the cause of God’s children.
And God’s children, well, the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
Thanks for listening to my tears and my words today. How grateful I am for a public canvas that allows them both a safe place to land. As always…
peace for the journey,
~elaine
Regardless of the size and scope of out imprints, we cannot escape the fact that they are ours to walk… to share, to leave. To say that we’ve been here, that our lives have touched the parcel of ground beneath our feet. Our footprints stand as a witness (both for us and against us) as to how we’ve invested our energies on planet earth.
All I have to do is look out my bedroom window to a neighboring lot and see the effects of a worldly neglect. But when I look inward to reflect on what’s growing inside these four walls, to the young ones who are within reach and are well-tended to this day, I see the effects of a Godly intention. A sowing that exceeds any amount of energy expended on the cultivation.
