Speak Up

“Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest.” Luke 9:48

Robert Seiple, the President of World Vision in 1992, wrote in a letter, “One of our sponsored children, a 14 year old Palestinian boy living on the West Bank, was caught by 16 Israeli soldiers as he was writing graffiti on a wall. The soldiers placed him up against the wall, and one shot him four times in the eye. As he lay on the ground, still alive, he was savagely beaten for almost an hour. During that time he was forced to stick his finger into his wound and wipe out the graffiti with his own blood. He was then bound and dragged through the village streets; finally thrown into the back of a jeep, and rudely dumped at a local hospital. Miraculously, he lived. Tragically this incident is not atypical. The entire drama was witnessed by an American. It has since been recorded in Western journals.”

This is just one horrible story among the millions of stories of children whose lives have been maimed by poverty, violence, abuse, and neglect. We do not need to look far. Fr. Shay Cullen wrote that there are an “estimated two million children in the Philippines sexually abused and exploited by parents and relatives in the online internet child abuse business. It grew during the pandemic lockdowns when members of the family turned to sexually abuse their children for sexual satisfaction of their urges and videotaped it and made money from selling the images to foreign pedophiles.”

I believe that Jesus is saying that children are among the most unprotected, the most voiceless, the most “unseen” members of society. They can easily become victims, especially during war, natural calamities, or when parents are quarrelling, working too hard, or are OFWs in far away places. In the verses before verse 36, Jesus was instructing the disciples on how to be great. The logic of God is always different from the world’s, usually diametrically opposed even. If anyone of us wants to be great, we have to be a servant of those who are unprotected, those who have no voice, and those who are “unseen” by society. Proverbs 31:8 says, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.”

Lord, Your Words are hard to take. It is as if we have to carry the whole world on our shoulders! Help us to do the work You want us to do, to be Your heart, Your hands, Your feet. I know that it can never be enough, but if many of us take just one portion of the ache of the world for You, it can change the world!