This devotion starts in the fantasy realm of Erin Morgenstern’s novel Night Circus. The protagonists are Celia, the illegitimate daughter of a magician whom he reluctantly raised when her mother committed suicide, and Marco, an orphan adopted by another magician. The children are raised lovelessly to be mere players in an elaborate magical competition–the Circus of Dreams.

To their fathers’ dismay, Celia and Marco fall in love with each other. Then they learn that the increasingly burdensome contest will only end when one of them dies. This is their destiny. This fantastic, romantic tragedy exposes the moral problem of people using other peoples as pawns in a game, mere tools, rather that autonomous human beings.

This isn’t just a fantasy-world moral problem. It’s everywhere in the real world. I heard a young man about seventeen speak at a church about his experience in foster care. While I know several wonderful foster parents, the system depends on people who do it primarily for the money. These “parents” strive to spend the least amount possible carrying for the children in their charge. The children are pawns in a game. This young man experienced that. He related how rarely anyone had acknowledged his birthday while he was in foster care, and so he had started a project to send birthday cards to as many children in foster care as he could.

Every newscast lately seems to show us how children of the Heavenly Father are terribly ill-treated. May God keep us mindful of their needs, and guide us to bring them help.

Read Luke 18:15-17 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne