"If we would only let them be so, children are often ready to be our teachers. When we become thoughtful about things, we want to know about life's purpose. Waiting to show us what it means to keep going, what we need to do to stay on top of things, are our sons and daughters, or the kids next door or across the street or around the block. They are going from one step to another, trying to meet this business of living as best they can.

They're on the lookout for something to do, someplace to be, something that will give the day some action. If you're doing something then by golly, you're alive! One achievement after another! Momentum matters--why not?

It is not easy to turn away from children, near and far, no matter the other obligations that press upon us. We want a future for this world, and when we look at boys and girls going about their ways and days, we are reminded of all that our sons and daughters need to do in the course of their short but important (sometimes momentous) lives spent here among us adults--and so our eyes meet theirs in pictures that become beacons for our moral sensibility, not to mention, our hearts.

All those children these pictures shown parading, seeing, posing, even sometimes peering, all those children the world over trying their hardest to get through the riddles of life, its variousness, its spells of good or bad. One hopes and prays for every one of them, for what their lives ended up being....