Today we commemorate the children slaughtered by Herod in his search of the child Jesus. His was a premeditated slaughter of newborn children but each year thousands of children die in infancy around our world most from starvation and preventable illnesses. Except for Afghanistan, the ten countries with the highest infant mortality are all in Africa. Despite the myth in most peoples minds about the amount of money we spend in foreign aid, in reality it is less that 1% of our budget, and only a fraction of that goes to Africa.
On the other end of the spectrum we look at the countries with the lowest infant morality and we are 45th behind countries like Greece and Israel.
Today let pray for all the mothers around the world who will see their infants die this day, and let us pray this coming year we may work to make the numbers smaller.
