Soapbox

Hotel Rwanda

Clutching the children’s hands, giddy with relief,
They hurry toward the loading buses
And the hideous truth that awaits them.

Today they will learn that some lives matter
And some lives don’t.
As they are sorted, black from white,
Saved from damned.

Each one is God’s child
Made exactly as He wants them to be
But these beloved children,
Some clutching rag dolls,
Some with nothing at all,
Watch with desperate eyes
As the buses take a few to safety
Because we have only enough compassion
For the ones who look like us.

A river of blood later we’ll shake our heads and say,
“How could this happen?�
Were we too busy with taxes and crabgrass
To worry about Poland and Guatemala,
The killing fields of Cambodia,
About Congo and Rwanda?

Today
The greatest nation will look away
From the desperate eyes in Darfur.
I guess we don’t have time to care
About people who are so far away,
But I think God does.

They are, after all, His children
And all he asks is that we love them well.