The disappearance of this little girl, the unending anguish of her parents, the investigations and accusations, our own sense of helplessness in this highly publicised tragedy, and one year on, no answers. No shortage of uninformed or mischievous speculation; as the world watches, the parents live through the occasional raised hopes but the much more frequent desolating disappointment of yet another closed door; and the criticism of Madeleine’s parents, which at best is unkind, at times is irresponsible, but in any case lacks the foundational human and humanising response of compassion as they try to live their lives around the heartbreaking reality of their daughter’s absence.
In Hosea, the soliloquy of God has the Eternal One saying, ‘How can I give you up, O Ephraim…? It is the cry of every parent facing the loss of their child, for whatever reason.
Zechariah’s vision of a city filled with the noise of children playing safely, is one of the longed for visions of a world where too many children are not safe.
Jesus’ warning about how God views the violation of a child’s trust, about millstones hung round necks and the long deep plunge into an ocean of judgement, brings an essential note of divine outrage to our far too this worldly view of the moral and eternal consequences of child exploitation. Child protection is not simply a modern legislative reaction – it is an essential human concern rooted in biblical principles and in the very nature of the God whose love is imaged, however faintly, in the creative consummate love of parents for their child.
Kirie eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison.
Amen
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