Will the stones cry out?

He replied, I tell you that if these keep silent, the very stones will cry out. Habukkuk 2:11 and Luke 19:40

Samson Makhado, director of Christian schools in South Africa, recently said, “I walked into a classroom and saw there were no pencils or pens. Instead, each child had a carefully guarded piece of lead with which to do assignments. I wanted to weep.” Cobus, a principal in one of those schools expressed his despair saying, “I look around at the teachers and students in my school and wonder who will still be with us a year from now. AIDS is killing our children and our teachers.”

In UlaanBataar, Mongolia, the police tell us that from 500 to 1,000 children live in the sewers under the streets at any one time. Some are orphans, others are refugees from abusive and alcoholic parents, and some have been abandoned by their families because there is not enough food. During the day these children beg for money, steal food, and search garbage for bones they can use to boil into thin soup just to stay alive. At night they huddle underground close to the insulated pipes that carry hot water to apartment blocks. They do not attend school because they have no one to give them clothing or school supplies. That is especially sad because school would not only provide education but give them one meal a day.

In Bangladesh, only 32% of the population over age 7 can read and write. Because their families live in poverty, children are needed to work in garment factories, as brick breakers, as rickshaw pullers or in other hazardous work. Schooling is the way out of this poverty, but if these children are to attend schools their families must have food.

We are filled with delight when our own children and grandchildren happily tell us what they are learning in their Christian school about living for justice and caring for others. At the same time, children in many countries throughout the world live in poverty and degradation that is unimaginable to us, scarcely able to stay alive, much less attend school. If Christians do not step forward and help these children will the very stones cry out?