attack on the most vulnerable

Last week I saw a disturbing documentary about elementary-aged kids playing something called the choking game. In it, they either hold their breath, choke themselves or get someone else to choke them in order to get a short high. The tragic thing is, sometimes this game ends in death.

In the documentary, several of the most unlikely kids were found dead of strangulation. Investigators and parents, at first unaware of the deadly game they were playing, labeled the deaths suicide. It was only later, when the children's participation in the choking game came to light, that it was considered these deaths might have been accidental.

Then today I heard a most tragic thing. About a week ago a six-year-old boy was stripped of his clothes and pushed into a lake by three other boys (seven, eight and nine years). He didn't know how to swim and drowned. It happened in a village north of Winnipeg.

A news article describes the tragic setting -- the village of Pauingassi, which has long had a problem with kids sniffing gasoline and adult alcoholism, abuse, violence and neglect.

What links these two things in my mind is the fact that they are both attacks on kids that are rank with the odor of destruction and death. In fact, the fingerprints of the destroyer are all over them. Satan is attacking the kids! It makes me angry. Let's resist this destruction with more watchfulness and prayer!

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Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 1 Peter 5:8

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Remember that no prayer goes unanswered. Remember that the moment a thing seems wrong to you, or a person's actions to be not what you think they should be, at that moment begins your obligation and responsibility to pray for those wrongs to be righted, or that person to be different.

Face your responsibilities. What is wrong in your country, its statesmen, its laws, its people? Think out quietly, and make these matters your prayer matters. You will see lives you never touch altered, laws made at your request, evils banished....

You may never see the mighty work you do, but I see it, evil sees it. Oh! it is a glorious life, the life of one who saves..."

- From God Calling by Two Listeners, edited by A. J. Russell

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Information on the choking game:

- on Wikipedia
- from a teacher site
- chokinggameinformation.com