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.