"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" -Golden Rule
A few years ago I was in Pass Christian, Mississippi on a mission trip. We were painting houses for the week that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina a year and a half before. For housing, we found ourselves staying at a very small, basic church outside of town. While we were there, I poked my head into the Sunday School room to get some rest and fell upon a shelf of journals the kids wrote in. With the curiosity of a college freshman, I opened one belonging to a young girl named Ellen. If the title page was to be believed, she was seven, although the wisdom the pages contained carried a much deeper weight. In her last entry I found words that have stuck in my mind in the years since then.
"Question of the Day: What is the most important thing a friend can do for another?" "Pick them up when they fall," she wrote. The words were written with the penmanship of a girl still playing on the monkey bars, but the truth they held came from a much more experienced age.
I've thought about Ellen a lot recently. Sometimes I think it's true when they say, "Everything I needed to learn I learned in kindergarten." The problem is, we don't believe those things anymore. I wonder if we ever really did. Let me explain:
We tell children to play nice, yet we only do it when others play nice with us first. We only play nice as long as everyone else is willing to do it to us.
We tell children to tell the truth, but we are willing to bend the truth if it's in our best interest or we might lose something by telling the truth.
We tell children to include everyone, yet we exclude people who aren't like us.
We tell children never to fight, but when fights come our way we make sure we dig our feet in the ground.
We tell children to forgive and say sorry, but humbling ourselves to the point of apologizing so often is too much to ask of ourselves because we're so convinced we're right.
We tell children that if you can't say something nice about somebody not to say anything, yet with our words it seems so often we are willing to tear others down as fast as we can with gossip and rumors.
We tell children it'll be ok, but we're so overwhelmed by our worries that we can't possibly believe that's true.
We cherish the innocence and love children share, yet we're convinced our lives were made for stress and struggle, anger and frustration.
I am TERRIBLE at living this kind of life. I am the hypocrite of hypocrites. I cannot escape that unfortunate reality. But I believe in its truth. Call me naive or juvenile, but a world led by these rules seems like something worth fighting for. If it's impossible, then what is there left to hope for? I refuse to believe there are relationships that love cannot heal. I refuse to believe the world Ellen saw is impossible!
I think I understand why Jesus loves kids so much, going so far as to say it is to them that the kingdom of God belongs. Children can accept and give love better than anyone. They aren't concerned with the stresses we think are so important. They are innocent enough to believe that God really is bigger than the boogie man and really does love everyone enough to have the whole world in God's hands. I want that kind of faith, the kind that believes the impossible is, in fact, possible. I want to love and smile and experience joy through the eyes of a child, because that must be life and life to the fullest. Then maybe I can share those thoughts above with a 7-year-old and actually believe them.
forever unfinished...
No comments:
Post a Comment