We used to go to auctions and yardsales when we first got married. Fueled by a love of most things old and the hope of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, we spent many a Saturday morning perusing other people's trash looking for our treasure.
As I sat in a refugee family's home the other day I was thinking about the lost treasures among the people of Syria. Not stuff, but people. Nine million people.....men, women, boys, girls, just like us...have been displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, are missing or are imprisoned. And the kids...oh the kids. More than half of the refugees created by the conflict are under the age of eighteen. They're being deem the "lost generation" because their educational opportunities and future prospects are virtually nonexistent. The loss to the people of Syria is unfathomable. The loss to humanity may be just as great. Think of the possible philosophers, musicians, doctors, artists, scientists...the next Albert Einstein, the next Eli Whitney, the next Gandhi....gone! Looking for potential, that treasure in Syria, has become just like searching for a needle in the haystack...if the haystack was on fire.
