Last night I went with Michelle to hear Marian Wright Edelman speak at Georgia State. For those of you who don’t know who she is, she is the Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund. She has been one of those women I looked up to from afar, but never realized what her life has been like and how she has gotten to the place where she is. She was the first to do a lot of things … check out her biography. She was a college student during the Civil Rights Movement in the 60′s, so you can imagine the stories she has to tell. She spoke for the Department of Education and challenged her audience to think about the children in our society, especially in the midst of the “crisis” we find ourselves in. If we don’t look out for our children now, then we can’t possibly expect our society to get any better. Here are some of my thoughts from the evening (some of these are her thoughts directly …others are my thoughts based on her thoughts):
We have to have high expectations of our children! When we believe they can achieve greatness, they will believe they can achieve greatness. But – we also have to give children the tools to achieve those expectations. Our schools today too often expect our children to fail, and refuse to give them the tools they need to achieve greatness.
Our children need positive & authentic adult role models. We have a children & youth problem because we have a serious adult problem.
We can’t sit around and wait to act … we need to act with urgency!
Parents are the most important people in the lives of children. Every child is a child of God and they need to know that. A child’s self-confidence comes from the solid truth that he or she is equal to everyone else, especially in the eyes of God. From the sidelines, those of us who work with children can only do that a little … but parents can do that a lot!
Society is stepping in as primary influence instead of the parents. Parents need to turn off the tv, music, computer games, etc. and bring back family time.
Our money demonstrates what our values are.
Children are not citizens in waiting – they are citizens now!
So what can we do?
1) Vote – according to Ms. Edelman (and I happen to agree) there has never been a clearer choice between candidates on who genuinely cares about children. Go Obama!
2) Get to know your neighbors! Create neighborhoods … we’ve got to be the herd that comes to save our little ones.
3) Pray – both in words, and in actions! (That means be an advocate!)
So my question for thought is: How do we, as congregations, become a community center for the children within a 5-mile radius of our church buildings?
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