I love the image created by this poet…and I think it was Edgar Simmons. I recall in my youth in the early sixties shaking a piggy bank and hoping to come up with six cents to get a “soda pop” down at the local mom and pop store in central Arkansas. Those coins were precious.

And so are our babies. I have deep appreciation for the beauty of nature…for birds, flowers, butterflies, deer, and certainly for doggies, being the devoted father of two lovely dachshunds. I gaze upon them, or look into their eyes, and I see the glory of God holding forth. But none of these can offer the glory of God that I see when I encounter one of God’s little children. They are our hope, our future. They represent millions of men and women voting with their feet…or some other part of their anatomy!…that life is worth living. Children represent the will of the species expressing itself.

In my retirement years, I have returned to work as a substitute teacher and I am deliberately focusing on early grade school and special needs children. They are teaching me so much about myself and about human nature. They are so fragile, so needy, and I’m so aware that even in my temporary role in their life I am part of our collective effort to “care” for them. And I’m so proud to see that even in Arkansas…always near the bottom of the education spectrum in our country…we provide such quality education and care. Some of these children would not have a chance in some countries. They would not be considered of any value at all and at one point in some cultures would have been left in the forest for nature to dispose of. But we value human life. That is a powerful decision that our culture has made. And it costs immensely but it is money well spent.

Ultimately, spirituality is about our values. What do we value? And, yes, our country is very suspect in many respects; we are so immersed in consumerism, for example. There is so much tawdry in our culture. But we do have our strong points one of which is our value of human life.

(And this is not even addressing the abortion issue! I don’t have the temerity to get into that yet.)