When our Confirmation material suggested I ask students about their earliest memory, it seemed like a good idea. And it was . . . for those who earliest memories were fond recollections of birthday parties, trips to grandparents, special outings or gifts on Christmas morning. One student’s response still haunts me, though. “My earliest memory,” she said, “is seeing my mom at the bottom of the stairs, after my dad pushed her down them.”

I thought of that early formative memory, as I was thinking of the children in Gaza, whose memories will be forever  tainted by falling bombs, sniper fire, hunger and lost family members. These are children who will carry the deep emotional scars of trauma and loss. Many children will live with missing limbs, and broken bodies, as visible witness of what has been endured.

A foot note in my Bible says, “In ancient wars, soldiers would often cruelly kill children.” But, this is no ancient time and children bear the brunt of its horror. Much as the 1972 image of nine-year-old Kim Phuc in Vietnam, running, with her body aflame from a napalm bomb, challenged the U.S vision of a righteous war, and the ways wars are fought, so the deaths of innocents in Gaza, challenge us today.

Trying to justify the onslaught of bomb after bomb after bomb, resulting in the deaths of over 13,000 children and multiple times that of gravely injured children, is impossible.  The killing of innocents, whether by military fire or starvation, is a grave offense against God who created us. And calls us, even in the chaos of war, to care for and protect the innocents.

“Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness . . . do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood.” Jeremiah 22:3 NRSV