There are many mornings and afternoons when I see small children in school uniforms walking alone or in pairs as they make their way to or from school--and the school is quite a distance away. on other occasions I see children coming from the market with small packets of groceries in their hands, blissfully walking along as they make their way home. And here are cops saying they never get reports of missing children around here. That must sound like heaven for many of our friends in the West, where children are preyed upon and snatched by human predators. Let us never take this common grace for granted. Let us thank God for the safety of our children.
Amen. I remember when we first arrived in Cayman. It was one of our first Sundays at the church. After the service, the children had disappeared. We'd been hanging around after the service for a while, so we panicked because the kids could have been taken at any point.
I went one direction; Kristie went another. People looked at us with some surprise. "Relax," they said. "This is Cayman. The children are safe." Honestly, I still felt very nervous. I could only think of the horror stories filed away over many years of news reports of missing children in the States.
For me, children were no longer safe after the Atlanta child murders in the late 1970s. Childhood changed then. That's when I couldn't ride my bike beyond certain borders in town or after early evening. That's when my parents, like a lot of others, started requiring from their children exact reports of planned movements around the neighborhood. So, it was incredible to find in Cayman a place where there wasn't the low-level fear gnawing at every parent's heart.
But, here, children are safe. I praise God along with my brother Conrad.
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