Tiny socks, tiny shoes...

"If you have a soft heart, please don't read this this. If you love justice and freedom, please do..."

I don't know his name. I don't know the name of his family. Their names are listed somewhere in the many news stories about this tragedy. Two young boys, brothers, died fleeing the most unimaginable terror possible. And how they died was just as bad as the terror they were trying to escape. I have wept over this story since reading it. I am weeping as I write this post. It is hard, every so hard to put this on paper. But it must. This story must be told even if some of the facts are still unknown.

I can almost imagine how this all happened. Christians living in Syria could feel the noose growing tighter and tighter from the butchers in the Islamic State. "Leave or die" or "convert or die" was their mantra. Life was becoming increasingly hard and dangerous in this land once known as Syria. Thousands had already died. Thousands more had fled to parts unknown. The options to where Syrian refugees could go were very limited. To everyone's unpleasant surprise, the welcome mat for Syrian Christians in many countries had been pulled away - only to be replaced by closed immigration and borders.

I could imagine this young family getting up in the middle of the night. An escape plan had been hatched. They had procured passage on a barely seaworthy craft to make it across the Mediterranean and into the Euro Zone. There they should be safe. They would land on a Greek Island and from there try to book passage to Canada where they had relatives.

As they prepared to leave, the kids were dressed. Barely older than toddlers, the mother dressed them for their journey. One boy was three and his brother was five. Small sized shirts and shorts followed by tiny socks and tiny shoes put on tiny feet. It was going to be a long and a hard journey, and the parents wanted to make sure the kids had on the the right kind of clothes.

During the voyage across the Mediterranean, something happened. Be it weather, be it the terrible condition of the boat, or a combination of the two. Something terrible happened and people started going over the side. As the father tried to protect his family, his two boys were swept overboard. It was the last time the mother or father would see them alive.

The tragedy of this story is simply this - it did not have to end this way. First off, this protracted genocide is nothing more than a repeat of the World War II Holocaust. And just like in World War II, many are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to what is happening in the Middle East. If the feckless United Nations or the United States had gone into Syria and Iraq and put and end to this bloodshed, the boys in this family might still be alive. But when their continual calls went out for help, they went unanswered.

But the frosting on the cake was this - we have done nothing, absolutely nothing to help these poor people escape this hell on earth. Not only have we done nothing, but the Muslim influence in our current Administration keeps us from accepting any CHRISTIANS Syrian refugees. This is the most amazing and horrible things I have ever seen my country do.

So there we have it. A gruesome picture of a dead boy, barely three years old. Died trying to escape death. This most innocent boy, dead, lying on a beach far from his home. Lying on a beach dressed the way this parents dressed him at the start of their journey. Dressed in that small shirt, small shorts, tiny socks and tiny shoes. 

May God have mercy on both those young brothers. And may God forgive us for our benign neglect.