Ordinary Time 
Pause
We are drawn to stories of children. We see ourselves in their faces and we naturally want to care for and protect them.
When children are threatened we want to respond. We want to do...something.
Our children belong to all of us and we each have a role to play in making their lives safe and sustaining. God's justice calls us to this task.
Listen
He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Isaiah 40:11
Think
Despite the world’s injustice, the Bible gives us hope by describing a God who cares for the young and their families very tenderly. The picture here is of God gathering both children and their caretakers. Sometimes in our questions about why things happen to children and their families around the world, we lose sight of this biblical picture of God as Shepherd—as the God who cares about justice even more than we care about justice, and who loves families very tenderly.
Studies show that whenever we make things better for women, we make things better for children. The World Health Organization says that many maternal deaths are preventable and 99 percent of them occur in developing countries where mothers lack health resources. The United Nations reports 70 percent of women and girls worldwide will experience abuse in their lifetimes, that 1 out of 3 don’t have access to safe sanitation and toilets, and that poverty often has a feminine face.
Whose efforts will you join in order to proclaim the tender, just God who gathers the young close to God’s heart?
Laura Rector
Pray
Lord, thank you for your tender compassion in a world that has so much evil. Thank you for your protective love that gives hope. Amen.
Go
Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
