Why Jesus pointed to a child

3 year old Adam, d. 10/31/2010

When he told us how to be.  Grab a box of tissues, you'll need them.  The story references the death of little Adam, a boy murdered in the Baghdad massacre of Christians that happened about a month ago.  It is the grace of God in a child, in whose lips God most often perfects praise, against one of the purest incarnations of hellish evil this world has yet to produce.  The story attempts to extract a moral message from young Adam's senseless death at the hands of brutal killers.  As much as I'm all for finding ways in which we can properly confront the evil of terrorism, or even the misdirected decisions we can make in fighting evil, I've always been a little hesitant to use the death of a child to drive home the point.  Whatever conclusions about the culture of death, America's response to terrorism, the reality of Islamic terrorism, or anything else, I prefer to just sit back and marvel at that poor young flower of a child whose life was cut so short, who had to die in such a way amidst such violence and hatred, and how he exemplified, for a brief flicker of a moment, what God meant when he said,  "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." 

Adam, may you and your parents, who you saw murdered, rest in the peace of God and find the love and care that this world did not provide.