School Childen in Gaza
This past Sunday worship at Trenton United was both briefer and livelier as we explored the biblical story of the Exodus, connected to a Blessing of the Backpacks. Children (about 20 of them) and some adults brought school and hiking backpacks to be blessed. After worship there were crafts for all ages and it was wonderful to see one pair of grandparents waiting slightly impatiently to leave because the grandkids didn't want to go. Isn't it supposedly to be the other way around? This was such a positive event across generations.
Two of these children were our grands, and our other two are in school now, with the four-year-old on the bus for the first time with his older sister. We are literally praying that they make the adjustment to new grades and JK. Happily, they live in a wonderful country and COVID is largely in the rearview mirror, so we're confident that they will flourish,
Consider that more than 300,000 Gazan children have already been out of school for nine months and will not return to school this week, likely missing the entire year. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced from their homes and are living amidst rubble or in tent encampments that have been relocated several times. Schools have been used as shelters, only to be bombed. hese are traumatized kids who are deprived of their right to education.
I am reluctant to use the term "genocide" because it has a legal definition and has racist overtones for some. Yet when one group not only kills civilians but deprives them of food and medicine and destroys the fundamentals of culture, what do we call it?
We simply must pray for these children of Gaza as well and cry out to God/Allah for justice.
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