Prayer for the world’s children
Today is World Children’s Day and the 30th anniversary of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child. Here’s a heartfelt poem that takes a stand for the innocence, purity, and strength inherent in all.
It makes me reel, the news
of child as soldier, as object of
some underworld, as sitting duck,
all of it unasked for, no,
this isn’t right –
when suddenly spiritual inspiration
streams in, steadies and lifts me to
Jesus’ love for children, for the child
whose greatness lies in purity and
freedom from wrong, in innocence
that knows no evil – the child who
gently reminds us of everyone’s
real identity as Spirit’s own child,
undividedly spiritual.
I pray that this truth mantle our world’s
children, carrying them on the wings
of God’s tenderness, divine Love’s
comfort and control, until tyranny,
cowardice, deception are ripped
from hiding – faceless and baseless –
no legitimacy, and the child wrapped
in Love’s care is seen as the child
within us all.
Beloved children, the world has need of you, – and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives.
– Mary Baker Eddy, “Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 110