Sometimes statistics cause our eyes to glaze over. Sometimes they should cause our eyes to fly open or to tear up. I think these sobering statistics do the latter.
1.2 million abortions are performed annually in the U.S., and that has created a war among religious and political people. Admittedly it is a difficult issue, and emotions run high on both sides. However, here's a statistic that I find frightening: 11 million children die every year of poverty-related causes, and most debates about that issue are primarily economic in nature as opposed to child-advocacy in nature. If people become impassioned about the plight of the not-yet-born, why aren't we equally impassioned about the needs of the children who are already among us?
Here's another sobering statistic (you've heard me mention it before): 123,000 pre-teenaged children sleep beneath America's bridges every night. They had no vote about being born into poverty. They are just suffering the results of it.
Want another one? How about this? Every 60 seconds in our country a child is physically or sexually abused, usually by a family care-giver. Do the math. It adds up to a lot of young lives who will carry a lot of deep scars into adulthood.
Closer to home: Over 527,000 children in New York City live in a household with an income of less than $16,600 for a family of three. We are New Yorkers. We know how far that amount of money will go for three people in our city. Those children will suffer nutritionally, and thus academically, and in all likelihood socially, all of the above being mixed into the batter that will determine what their futures look like.
We could go on and on, but you get the point. There is a children's crisis that is epidemic in proportion. Other crises grab the headlines, and understandably so. Who could not be moved by what we have seen in the Gulf Coast, Japan, Alabama, and Missouri? And, as Christians, we are divinely mandated to respond. But, once those crises are finally resolved and life is restored in those areas of temporary tragedy, the crisis among our kids will keep on going. Who speaks for the hungry child, the abused child, the victimized child, the marginalized child, the at-risk child, the lonely child, the vulnerable child? Jesus said: "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such as these belongs the Kingdom of God." He was straightforward in his love for children and his call that we actively love them, too. I think, as His followers, that we cannot allow our eyes to glaze over when this issue is discussed.
At church, in the public arena, through letters to lawmakers, through donations to child development centers or children's hospitals, through contributing to Marble's annual school drive for underprivileged kids, through finding local child-friendly agencies to support with money or volunteerism, in some active and meaningful way all of us have the chance to do something to create a better world for children. In so doing, they (the caretakers of the future) will be equipped to create a better world, as well.