Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

While growing up in the 1950s, my mother and father insisted that my siblings and I attend Sunday School every Sunday. 

While there, my classmates and I learned the words of a well-known and beloved spiritual that reassured us of God’s inclusive love for the whole of creation. 

“He’s got the whole world in his hands” we sang with as much enthusiasm as 6 year olds could muster on a Sunday morning.

‘The wind and the rain.

The little bitty baby.

You and me sister.

And (finally) everybody.”

Notice the absence of exclusions and exceptions.

Not just Americans or Russians or Ukrainians – or Israelis or Palestinians.

Not just Democrats or Republicans or Bidenites or Trumpees.

Not just Christians or Jews or Muslims.

The God of all Creation, we sang, has EVERYBODY in his hands, because Everybody is the result of God’s creative power and stupendous love. 

The God of the people of Israel is the God of the people of Palestine is the God of the Christians of America. 

A Palestinian baby has the same value as an Israeli baby. And a Jewish baby has the same value as a Palestinian baby. 

The same God who heard the cries of ancient Hebrews and freed them from slavery to an Egyptian tyrant hears the cries of Palestinian children as bombs descend upon them from Israeli warplanes.

The Christmas Narrative about the birth of a “little bitty baby” named Jesus includes an episode called the Massacre of the Innocents. The story refers to a decree issued shortly after the birth of Jesus by the Jewish King of Judea, Herod the Great. 

Herod worried that a baby born in Bethlehem that night would grow up to usurp him as King. He didn’t know which of the many babies born that night would replace him. So he ordered the execution of all children in Bethlehem and the vicinity of the age of two or under.

Tens of Jewish infants were slaughtered by the sword in order for one man to feel secure about his throne. As we know from “the rest of the story”, that child, named Jesus, escaped to Egypt, from which he would later return and eventually be known as the Prince of Peace.

Today’s Palestinian children have not been so lucky. Their escape route was blocked.

We are assured by the ole Spiritual that God’s got both the little bitty Jewish and Muslim babies in his hands and loves them equally. Nevertheless, the ancestors whose ancient King slaughtered Innocents to end a threat to his kingship now bomb innocents who pose no threat to their sovereignty of Israel.

Power to stop the killing of innocents and the destruction of the hospitals to which they are taken is mostly in the hands of Israel. Until Israel decides that Hamas has paid a fair price for its illegal invasion of Israel – until Israel commits to limiting its retaliation in accordance with the biblical limitation of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” [and no more than an eye or a tooth] – we will continue to hear the screams of innocents as shrapnel enters their bodies and bombs tear off their arms and legs.

As they cling to their fathers and mothers. Cover their ears. See the light of the missile and wait for the lethal blast. 

Why do they want to kill me?, they wonder. What did I do to deserve this? Why can’t anyone protect me? Will I be wounded? Will I lose an arm or a leg? 

Who will die next? My mother or father? My sisters or brothers? 

When will Hamas accept that my life is more precious than its political ideologies? When will Israel consider the debt of invasion paid? When will it cease to demand that the whole body be required in retribution for the damage to one eye?

Of course, we condemn the killing of innocent children in Israel. But, by the same code of compassion, are we not also obligated to declare the killing of Palestinian innocents morally repugnant? 

When will all God’s children be safe from drones and attack helicopters and fighter jets?

When will the ground stop shaking and the buildings stop falling? 

When will enough be enough?

For the sake of children everywhere, Lord, make it soon. 

Polk Culpepper is a retired Episcopal priest, former lawyer and a Washington resident.