“I wish that I could be like a simple child and literally believe what the Lord says.”

Charles Spurgeon

What a glory there is in being with children.  It is enlivening, instructive, and, yes, convicting.  There is a wonder to their naivete.  We, of course, are the informed and enlightened ones.  Their penchant to enjoy life is contagious.  They throw themselves without reservation into whatever they are doing.  Play is serious work. 

Their emerging rhetorical skills are fascinating to experience.  Our three-year-old grandson loves to tell jokes.  The best part about them is that they make no sense, have no inherent logic, and he takes such great pleasure in recounting them, followed, of course, by belly laughter. 

Recently, we were with all of our grandchildren at a Back-to-School campout, that included an iconic quote from Andi to me at 1:35 a.m., “You know, we’ve been married forty-four years and have never slept together in a tent.”  But, O, what a night filled with delights. 

Sharing company with children disabuses us of the hubris we layer up on in peer relationships with adults.  I love the straight forward guilelessness of children.  It is both instructive and delightful to engage.  Children tend to be devoid of pretense.  Sure, there can be bluster, but it’s honest bluster and playful.  To experience it is to find delight afresh.  They tend to be straight with you when you engage them.

Children help us in a million ways.  Sure, they are a lot of work.  Sure, there is a cost to children.  But all of the investments are worth it.  And none of it (childhood) lasts very long. 

I find three ways in particular that children speak to my soul.  It is the extra delight of being a grandfather. 

Children have a large capacity to trust.  It seems natural to them to believe.  They have no trouble relying upon others.  Sure, those who have been mistreated or abused lose this facility.  But most children are high on, and quick to trust.  Their faith is, well, childlike; childlike in the best kind of way.  That childlike way of faith pleases the Lord.  It is a page out of the “just to take Him at His word” playbook.

I realize that some children have been through trauma, and loss, and do experience worry.  But, by and large, most of the children that I have been around have not the first worry.  They remain blissfully free from the besetting entanglements of concern and anxiety.  They just breathe, enjoy living, and take the next step.  “Be anxious for nothing” seems to be the driving thesis of their existence.  I have never met a child brooding over money or power.  I do not know too many of them worrying about tomorrow.  They live in today, wholly, and fully.  I suppose not worrying is the flipside to that childlike faith.

Their naivete helps here.  They do not yet know enough to be worried.  They have not learned the wiles of seeking control.  There are just in the moment, living and enjoying life.  We need more of that…or should it be…”We need some of that”?

Children tend to not seek to impress others.  Sure, there are outliers and exhibitionist.  But children, while appreciating attention, seek engagement without yearnings to capture the central attention of the room.  They are not hankering to be impressive as much as they are yearning to be absorbed with interaction.  They seek guileless fun. 

Yet to flower in their hearts with great fruitfulness is the M/O of our world’s system (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, I John 2:16).  Not captured with such motions of life and spirit, they come with zest to each new day finding yet another opportunity of joy in the thrill of living. 

Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  Matthew 18:3. Being around children allows one to understand a measure of what Jesus was saying.  The simple trusting heart of a child is the kind of heart which brings all of us into the kingdom of heaven.   The child’s heart devoid of anxiety and worry is a heart at peace with God and with life…an enviable spot to be in traversing through our broken world.  The humility of a naïve child is glorious and instructive.  It is also humbling to think of just how far away from such a heart we are. 

Sure, we move onto maturity.  We put away childish things (I Corinthians 13:11).  But there is scriptural warrant to argue that we never outgrow being childish in our ways of trust and our perception of ourselves before the Living God.  So, let’s just be children today…in the right kind of ways!