wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] 'One child lost is way too many'

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Note #7793 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

'One child lost is way too many'
GA03104

'One child lost is way too many'

Woman who writes about kids commends those who live for them

by Alexa Smith

DENVER, May 29 - Author Katherine Paterson was honored as a "Children's
Champion" Thursday at the fourth annual "Embracing the Children" luncheon
sponsored by Presbyterian Children's Home and Related Ministries.

	Paterson is an award-winning children's author with a long list of
popular titles, among them Bridge to Terabithia, The Great Gilly Hopkins and
Jacob Have I Loved. Her newest book, The Same Stuff as Stars, was published
last fall.

	Paterson's characters are often kids in a hard-knock world who are
seeking love and acceptance.

	During her gracious acceptance speech, Paterson told her audience -
many of whom work with abandoned or abused children - that she may write
about children, but "You live for them."

	"I may get honors in the world, but God knows who the real champions
are," she said.

	Paterson said one of her most poignant characters, Gilly Hopkins,
evolved out of her own experience as a foster mother, at a time in her life
she looks back on with mixed emotion - and some shame. She said she found
herself, sometimes, counting down the days until her short-lived foster
experience would end.

	"But  that was acting as though two human beings were disposable,
persons that God loves as much as God loves me," she said softly. "And that
is why crimes are committed, why wars are fought, why holocausts happen. That
is what happens when one person or group thinks that another person or group
of persons is disposable."

	Paterson said Gilly, however, is a character that many "outsiders"
identity with - her lying, her cursing, her bullying, her ways of getting by
in a world where she belongs to no one. She said Gilly has been well-loved by
prisoners, and by kids who have been shuttled through foster care. "And that
makes it worth it," she said, "if a single child in a corrections center sees
herself in Gilly, and finds hope."

	The focus on the value of even one child is a hallmark of
Presbyterian Children's Home and Related Ministries.

	Lyle Hamilton, of the Intermountain Children's Home and Services
Center in Helena, MT, told the story of a young woman who came there years
ago, lost and alone - and is now happy and successful. She recently came back
to the home to say thanks.

	"One child lost," Hamilton said, "is way too many."

	Paterson closed the luncheon with the Bible story about the disciples
shooing children away from Jesus, speculating that those children may have
been the unlovely ones, those who are sad, abused, abandoned, hungry, angry,
or whose limbs have been torn away by land mines. She praised her audience
for allowing such children to "come in," and for sharing Jesus' love with
them.

	She reminded her listeners of something else, too. They too are
children that Jesus loves, she said, children who are "born again" when they
are curled up on his lap, "fully alive to the joys of the kingdom of heaven."

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