INSPIRE

INSPIRE

Is there a child near you who might do with a bit assistance from you?

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage, otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter, but darker. - C. S. Lewis

Seated outside in the green fields, a little boy slowly walks to where I am. He is a very familiar boy, and a very intelligent one. He is only four years old, and an ardent story teller at that tender age. He has been in the neighborhood for only a few months, and his mother occasionally leaves him behind as she goes out in search of their daily bread. He relates stories of the place they used to live in town and of the games they used to play and of the so many friends he had. He even tells of a story of a visit to a clinic where the ‘doctor’ called him a genius boy- that he probably was! He then looks up at me keenly and innocently asks, “Are you my father?”  Confused, I mumble unintelligibly and quickly change the topic. Probably I should have just said a firm and confident yes. He must be in his teens now, whatever he became, I missed out a great chance to be helpful to that young soul (and how I pray that along the way he did find a father figure!)

Several months later, there is so much energy in a children’s camp! With the so many activities lined up, the kids can’t wait to jump out of the class into their games kit and into the field. But there is this young girl, probably 8 years, who seems to have picked up something during the lesson that she needed to clarify. Walking up to me, she courteously indicates that she had a question. After getting the go ahead to ask the question, she says, “my father died last year in a road accident, he was drunk and that is why the accident happened. Do you think he went to heaven?” Now, if death is ‘painful’ for adults, it must be a horror for children, the so much unexplained commotion and the mere sight of adult agony must be destabilizing to a Childs world, and they probably have the least social support during such instances. I answered her with part question. After asking her whether she or God loved her father more, she answered with much conviction that God did. All I did was assure her that if God loved him more than she did, then he would not do to him anything she would not (a statement partly off the Book Forgotten Among the Lilies), he was in ‘gentler’ hands. The girl was satisfied with the answer (whose meaning might probably change with her understanding of love and of God). But think of the so many questions the little boys and girls have, and the sort of answers they get shape their understanding of the world and how they interpret things for the rest of their lives!

A few years later I was honored to head a team of children outreach in college. This included organizing Sunday school classes for the children of the campus employees and the neighborhood. This had grown into the neighboring communities and into the schools. The most interesting and most touching part was however to an approved school (sort of juvenile jail) about a kilometer away. It had dozens of boys whom parents (if they were there), and community had given up on. They had been found guilty of serious crimes with at least 3 there for killing. They were a most anti-social lot, reticent and bitter. Their days were filled with farm work, and other menial work (and a bit of craft training for a few teenagers). These kids were there to be reformed, and though I can attest to the fact that the school administration was doing the best within their means, it never came close to giving them a meaningful life.  Our idea of reformation as an outreach team was a quasi family set up. With a ‘father’ and a ‘mother’ (drawn from the student community) interacting with them at least once a week (on a Friday). It was amazing to interact with the kids and hear the stories of their little world. The circumstances of their crimes were sometimes unfortunate, like a game grudge taken too far leading to a barely 10 year old fatally hitting his friend with a stone (and am not downplaying the gravity of the crime or the pain of the victims family- just suggesting it is a situation a lot of us could have easily found ourselves in through just a bit of bad luck). More amazing however was how open and friendly they became as we continued to chat with them in the quasi family set up. The most beautiful part was when most of them agreed to go back to school and were absorbed in a local school so that when we went to see them, we were not just chatting but running through their school books and homework and talking about what they wanted to be when they were adults. It is my sincere prayer they went out to become as they desired

To be sure, our discussions with the boys did not involve anything so technical or difficult. It was mostly listening to them and once in a while telling them stories from our lives, from the bible and or other people’s lives as it deemed appropriate.  As adults, we know life is not always easy, our jobs sometimes suck, and separation, sickness and death, when they come, are very painful. We talk about these things, and our children hear. It is only fair that we also tell them stories of people who have overcome these things. People, who have enjoyed their jobs against all the odds, people who have beaten sickness to live productive lives. People who have resisted great evil for the betterment of the human race, if we don’t, we are making them grow up with a very dismal outlook.

PS: The mother elephant was tranquilized to treat the baby who had been caught by a snare on the trunk. They are both doing very well. These are conservation efforts supported by the Hotel Chain I work for.