Imagine being a child who has never had the luxury of their own room; or who has to share a toothbrush with eleven others in their dormitory. Or that you had never been given anything - other than food and water to keep you alive. Imagine then that you were given something of your own. It has a lid and it is yours and all the things within it...you are then beginning to understand the Power of the Shoebox.
In 1999, a Samaritan's Purse team were in Honduras where Hurrican Mitch had struck the year before and rendered many people homeless and in great need. After distributing shoeboxes to the children, a pastor among the team was moved to write this poem I use it a lot and I thought I would share it with you:
Our Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all our lives, we come before you today to pray for the children;
Who sneak lollipops before supper,
Who erase holes in math’s workbooks,
Who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those who stare at photographs from behind barbed wire,
Who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of trainers,
Who never “counted potatoes”,
Who were born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
Who never go to the circus,
Who live their lives in an X-rated world.
We pray for children, who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those who never get dessert,
Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who watch their parents watch them die,
Who can’t find any bread to steal,
Who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s refrigerator,
Whose monsters are very, very real.
We pray for children, who spend all their pocket money before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the supermarket and pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the bath,
Who get visits from the tooth fairy,
Who don’t like to be kissed outside school,
Who squirm in church and scream into the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those, whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything their hands can find,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep.
Who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must,
For children we do not allow to be born and for those who are born but not allowed to truly live,
For those we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance,
For those we smother and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.
We pray for all those children whom Jesus loves and especially for those who haven’t heard.
O dear God, forgive us. Amen
