But when adults speak up for the vulnerable and the weak, working and demanding that safety and respect prevail, God's little lambs are protected and nourished. They know they are not abandoned; they are loved. And the world becomes a little more like heaven as a result.

Nurturing a child’s sense of personal worth and therefore hope and dreams for a wonderful future is perhaps the most important responsibility of every grownup in a child’s life.

But when adults speak up for the vulnerable and the weak, working and demanding that safety and respect prevail, God's little lambs are protected and nourished. They know they are not abandoned; they are loved. And the world becomes a little more like heaven as a result.

It all begins, I maintain, with that powerful and underutilized thing called love. God's love for the individual is displayed by those people who reflect his love in their words and deeds. It ultimately gets understood and accepted by the child in poverty, and through that individual's love for others, the world gets changed.

We absolutely must battle with every bit of determination we can muster to root out the harm that would warp the souls and spirits of children in our world.

A church begins to die when it says, ‘They were just children.

...while God has done his part in creating a world capable of providing what we need, we have not done our part in the stewardship of it, in seeing that it gets to the end of the line, to the poorest and neediest--the children.