Among earth’s biological species humans are the least instinctually equipped to survive. It takes much more than a decade to give a child a fighting chance.

The nascent humans and human children of our species are the most vulnerable on our planet without the constant unconditional care and regard of parents, communities, and nations. And God chose to become a nascent human! Ponder that.

Yet in a desire for power we “weaponized” these little humans, to win seats, control outcomes, and force what can only be acquired by the heart and welcomed freely: the immeasurable, timeless gift of the child.

The majority of these little ones are future women and the children of the marginalized: persons of color and the poor, who in their poverty and ethnicity bless societies with the very presence of God.

In the parade of memes and sound bites on all sides it’s the child that’s missing and the child that’s exploited for our narcissistic cultural conflicts, as are the children at our southern border, bloodied in the war-torn apartment complexes of Europe and the Middle East, hungry to learn in America’s inner-city schools, the neglected and hopeless of our fentanyl wastelands.

Yes, women are exploited and abused and left to fend for themselves, bearing the greatest burden of human existence without complaint and with grace, and their bodies are sacred, owing of a far deeper reverence than either American extreme seems capable of imagining.

But it’s not just the bodies of women that are at stake; it’s also the bodies of the smallest of our species, the faces of the poorest, which as our wisdom teaches are one body with us, and with us comprising one human body in Jesus Christ.

Reverencing the bodies of humans—women and children—means treasuring them in our laws and in our hearts by advocating for their priority and providing for their natural flourishing.

One cannot enforce this vision of “all for one and one for all” interdependence. It’s costly and depends on the “let it be to me” of every human.

Yet what a gift awaits! When we welcome the refugee child, the abused child, the unwanted child, the unexpected child, and women, we welcome God.