SUNDAY CHOICE – Tell me why? – By Charles Schokman
It also referred to an article written by Fr. Terence posing the question- Tell me why? that focussed on children in the war ravaged Vanni, Sri Lanka. Click on attachment.
Tell me why?
The most precious gift that God has given us in this world is our children. No doubt that, this is the core of whatever the religion that you believe in. Jesus had very prominent place for the children in his life and warned the elders that unless they become like children they will not inherit the kingdom of God. Further he alarmed that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and thrown into the sea.”
The future is our children. Tomorrow’s world belongs to them. Cultures and languages compare children with the best of things in this universe.
Children are like flowers. They are like angels. Heaven belongs to the children. Children’s world is so beautiful when someone is among children he/she forgets all his/her worries and problems. Children are kind, honest, innocent and loving. This world is not ours but of children. If so, it is our utmost and paramount duty and responsibility to love and protect these blossoming buds that may bloom and make the creation of God beautiful. Let’s not and not allow any body to destroy them that they may grow and live in this world and make it still a better place for those who are yet to come.
This is my wish, your wish, our wish, everybody’s wish and wish of the whole world. There is a special U.N. convention on the rights of the child so to confirm and show the most importance place that children hold in this world.
Now it is quite clear that, this should be the position and the place of the children in this world. But in reality and when we look at the world around can we be happy about their situation? Let’s draw our attention to our beloved children in the war ravaged Vanni.
Are they not children? Why the whole world is silent before this carnage? Why this fearful silence in the south? Is it because they are not Sinhalese?
Is it because that we have never become a prey to this brutal war?
Is it because that they are Tamils? Are we not responsible for this miserable and pathetic situation of these innocent children? How do we live so
peacefully in the South as if nothing happen in this country? Are we HUMAN BEINGS?
Once again it reminds me of a sentence from the book “Nazi doctors” written by Robert Jay Lifton where one of his interviewees, who was an Israeli dentist, spent 3 years at the Auschwitz camp in Nazi Germany, mentions that “THIS WORLD IS NOT THIS WORLD”
“When somebody needs somebody we don’t give a helping hand.
It is a world full of people in need.
Tell Me Why?”
Fr.Terence (Sri Lanka)