The four tiny rocking
chairs sit in silent tribute on the gracious lawn of the Children’s
Defense Fund lodge at the former Alex Haley Farm in Tennessee.
On each chair a plaque reveals a name—Addie Mae Collins,
Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley—the names
of the four girls killed in Birmingham in the 1963 bombing of
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Unlike the infant Moses,
it seems there was no one to deliver them to safety at a time
when prejudice and hatred were visited even upon the children.
In America many children still live at risk of their lives.
With one in five living in poverty and more than 12 million
lacking health care coverage, today’s children need a
helping hand as surely as Moses did. The Children’s Defense
Fund (CDF) does not make baskets to save children but works
for fair and equitable public policies that keep children afloat
in times of turbulence.
Throughout its thirty-year history, the Children’s Defense
Fund has worked with and through denominations and churches
to provide educational opportunity for special needs children,
reform juvenile justice laws and practices, and increase funds
for programs serving children and their families in matters
ranging from school lunches to health care.
Even as Moses was saved from laws that would have taken his
life, CDF works for the enactment of laws that allow all children
to live the lives for which they were created. Worship resources
and training opportunities are available at the CDF Web site,
www.childrensdefensefund.org.
—Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner, deputy executive director,
National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. |