'Children are the promise of the future'
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Pleas to assist children in need are frequently issued from various religious, charitable and government sources. An eloquent call to "save the children" was extended by President Gordon B. Hinckley in the Sunday morning session of the October 1994 general conference. In part he said:
"Children are the promise of the future. They are the future itself. The tragedy is that so many are born to lives of sorrow, of hunger, of fear and trouble and want. Children become the victims, in so many, many cases, of man's inhumanity to man."Surely God, our Eternal Father, must weep when He sees the abuse that is heaped upon His little ones, for I am satisfied they hold a special place in His grand design.
"How great is our responsibility, how serious the responsibility of Christian people and men and women of goodwill everywhere to reach out to ease the plight of suffering children, to lift them from the rut of despair in which they walk. . . .
"Surely . . . we can do more than we are now doing to lift the blight that condemns millions of children to lives that know little of happiness, that are tragically brief, and that are filled with pain.
"And we need not travel halfway across the earth to find weeping children. Countless numbers of them cry out in fear and loneliness from the evil consequences of moral transgression, neglect, and abuse.
"My plea - and I wish I were more eloquent in voicing it - is a plea to save the children. Too many of them walk with pain and fear, in loneliness and despair. Children need sunlight. They need happiness. They need love and nurture. They need kindness and refreshment and affection. Every home, regardless of the cost of the house, can provide an environment of love which will be an environment of salvation.
"Save the children. Too many suffer and weep. God bless us to be mindful of them, to lift them and guide them as they walk in dangerous paths, to pray for them, to bless them, to love them, to keep them secure until they can run with strength of their own."
