If we could see their faces

She sways under the weight of her burden; a water vessel balanced upon her head. A boney child wiggles his toes from where he hangs in the sling across her back. Wrapped in little more than brightly colored cloth, her exposed extremities reveal in full a body wracked with hunger. She is merely surviving. As she stumbles more fully into focus, we can see her worn and weathered hands, glassy, tired eyes, and sunken cheeks. A message flashes across the screens before us, inviting us to come to her aid. As the lump in our throats grows unbearable, we jump into action. We’ve never been so pierced that anyone would have to live this way. We’re desperate to defend her.

Unlike the vivid picture of this young woman’s broken and poverty-stricken world, theirs is invisible to us. The human plight of these little ones is shrouded in mystery, as their unformed bodies are suspended in time. They hang in the balance between life and death, their very lives at stake.