As Malala Yousafzai, 14, Fights To Live, When Is Extremism Too Extreme For Comfort?................

This is the first picture of shot Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in her hospital bed. The picture shows her looking at the camera, clutching a white and pink teddy bear.

Doctors at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham, where the 14-year-old is being treated, have released details of her injuries after the teen consented to details of her treatment being made public.---So many times we start a cause we firmly believe in and vow to see it to the end but when confronted with unforeseen challenges and life threatening dangers, we back down, out of fear!

How many of us are willing to die for what we believe in? As world passes through one of its most difficult moments, are we willing to pay the ultimate price for a better world? As they say, ‘everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!’

My thoughts are steered today towards Malala Yousafzai, the 14 year old Pakistani girl who was shot twice at close range in the head by a Taliban gunman as she travelled home on a school bus in Mingora in the strife-torn Swat Valley on Tuesday.Malala, who from the age of 11 defied the Taliban to write a blog for the BBC championing education for girls, was targeted by the extremists, who believe girls should be kept at home and barred from school.

As her life hangs in the balance, I urge everyone to say a word of prayer for the recovery of Malala – her life is a challenge to me, to everyone of us that we are not too young or too old to make and be the change that we desire.