All Our Children

Topics: Children

The following Illustration is especially appropriate for 1 John 5:1-6
but fits John 15:9-17 as well.

During the conflict in Sarajevo a reporter who was covering the conflict
in the middle of Sarajevo saw a little girl shot by a sniper. The
reporter threw down his pad and pencil, and stopped being a reporter for
a few minutes. He rushed to the man who was holding the child, and
helped them both into his car.

As the reporter stepped on the accelerator, racing to the hospital, the
man holding the bleeding child said, "Hurry, my friend, my child is
still alive."

A moment or two later, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing."

A moment later, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm."

Finally, "Hurry. Oh, God, my child is getting cold."

When they got to the hospital, the little girl was dead. As the two men
were in the lavatory, washing the blood off their hands and their
clothes, the man turned to the reporter and said, "This is a terrible
task for me. I must go tell her father that his child is dead. He will
be heartbroken."

The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man and said, "I
thought she was your child."

The man looked back and said, "No, but aren't they all our children?"

Yes, they are all our children. They are also God's children as well,
and he has entrusted us with their care in Sarajevo, in Somalia, in New
York City, in Los Angeles, in my hometown of Perry, Georgia, and here in
Washington, D.C.

Jim Wallis, Who Speaks For God?, New York: Delacorte Press, 1996, pp. 72-73.