Most likely it is not any of the children at the birthday party. She wasn’t invited. How can a child learn how to make friends when
she doesn’t stay in one place long enough?1
It’s probably not the kid on the soccer team.
How can a child learn how to play a sport when he doesn’t have a dad who
will kick a ball with him? A mom who
will drive him to practice every week?
But maybe it’s the young girl who sits next to
your daughter at school. The girl with
the slumped shoulders who never makes eye contact. The one who shuffles her feet a little bit
when she walks, a result of growing up with shoes that never fit quite right. Or the one who, when the teacher asks her to
read out loud and she stumbles over the words, gets teased and laughed at by
the other students.2
Perhaps it’s the little boy you see when you go
to the store. The boy who keeps touching
everything within his reach, and who has a tantrum when he hears the word
“no.” Or the one who bats his eyelashes
at everyone he meets, knowing that they will inevitably say, “Ah, he is so cute!”
It could be the kid on the swings at the
park. Or the one in the Sunday School
class that you teach every week. Or the
one who visited Vacation Bible School last summer.
They are all around you, and yet they remain
invisible. They are foster children in
our own community – in our schools and neighborhoods and playgrounds - who are
waiting to be adopted. They are our
country’s invisible orphans.
