As the year draws TO A CLOSE with the celebration of Christmas and with electioneering put on hold for a short while, there will soon be time for quiet reflection, and during the pleasantries of the imminent season, many of us will breathe a sigh of relief that we have made it so far.
We will, of course, be thankful for friends and family, and we may pause to consider and keep in our prayers, all those families who are mourning the loss of loved ones, and especially those who lost their young children recently in the United States and elsewhere; for incidents of savage and senseless violence anywhere offend the sensibilities of right-thinking people everywhere.
Of course, there will be those households that will be exposing their very young ones to the joys of Christmas and we share the excitement and feeling of togetherness that an addition to the family can mean at this time; for it is the celebration of the birth of the Christ child that means so much to our civilization and to each of us who profess the Christian faith.
From time to time we let fall from our lips the statement that children are our future, and indeed they are. Almost everything that we do is concerned with children and preparing them for the world we will leave behind.
When, for example, we seek to preserve the environment or to improve our health services or to make more efficient and relevant the delivery of education we are doing all this with an eye to the future of our children.
This provides an immediate benefit to the society as a whole, but the future always beckons and is with us even when it does not dominate our minds. It was part and parcel of the sacrifices made by our ancestors when they fought the repressive and wicked situation of slavery.
Many would have recognized that although change would come too late for them, it would benefit their sons and daughters and their grandsons and granddaughters!
The Christmas season ought to focus our minds decidedly on our children, not only because it is their season, but because we have to do our best to allow them to be children.
We must not only protect them from the wicked and mindless violence which may be wrought upon them by the disciples of evil cowardice emboldened with the aid of assault weaponry, but we need to better protect them from the insidious dangers of narcotic and illegal drugs, and from the salacious and mind-twisting, too-frequent soft pornography on prime time television.
Bullying at school, child abuse of all kinds must not be part of their childhood experience!
In light of recent events elsewhere, let us as a nation not rest on our laurels. We must learn from the mistakes of others and, as we prepare to make Christmas the happiest it can be for our children, resolve to let our children be children by protecting them from the evils that threaten to rob them of their childhood.
