sermon epiphanies

(get it?? epiphanies!)

(cn: violence, especially against children)

babies (and children) are, quite probably, the most dangerous threat to unjust power.

 a: Voldemort finds out about the prophecy and has to kill Harry ASAP--no waiting to find out what kind of a threat he will be.

b: Herod's reaction to Jesus = kill all the babies (even though he will be dead long before Jesus is an adult).

c: in Moses' day, the pharaoh's plan to keep all the power away from the Hebrew people is to kill all the babies.

d: Malala Yousafzai's commitment to education access posed such a threat that the Taliban attempted to kill her.

e: very little care or concern was exhibited for the people and refugees of Syria until a little boy was killed on the journey to freedom and another was covered in blood and dirt in Aleppo and people started to care.

f: boko haram kidnapped 276 girls who were students at a government school in Chibok, Nigeria, whose lives--for those who survive--will never be the same.

g: the school to prison pipeline funnels kids away from opportunities to change the world and toward a life of restriction and slavery.

h: child slavery is a tool used to oppress humanity.  from a young age, children are taught not to think past the next 24 hours, if that.  they are kept busy, working in factories and sweat shops and doing sex work so that they cannot think past what is immediately before them, creating a pattern that can continue their whole lives, keeping them submissive to a system that only wants them for what they can do.
i: rape is used as a weapon not only for the violence (psychological and physical) of it, but for the potential of children being born who complicate (for lack of a better word) the culture of the survivors of rape.

babies have not yet learned the hatred and the fear that we live and breathe as adults. they are filled with goodness and potential. what would happen if we actually listened to them? what if you could vote at a younger age? what if children could decide the future of the environment and education?