This morning I awoke to the news that a little girl who had been abducted from school the day before was found ”safe.” The fact that she left school fully clothed including coat and hat, but was found crying out from under a large play toy with only a t-shirt merely suggests that she was found alive but hardly sounds safe to me.  The day before at 8:50 am the school assumed that a woman dressed in hijab and burqa was the little girls mother, neglected their usual protocol and allowed her to go straight to the child’s classroom and together left school property. The real mother didn’t know she was gone until the end of the day when the woman who was suppose to pick up the little called to make sure she was already home with the mother. An Amber alert went out a few hours later. It is so hard to find words for a parent’s worst nightmare. If ever there was a time to understand the village concept concerning our children this is it before any more of God’s most vulnerable are abused. We are not God and we wont always get it right. Yet, if God is in us we too must hate the wickedness, the evildoers, and the deceitful and know that while the amber alert may keep them alive, sometimes even the smallest of precautions keeps them safe. What happens to one child happens to all of our children. Lord hear our prayer.

O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from earth may strike terror no more (Psalm 10).