Suffer the children…  

 by adam harbinson

Someone gave my wife a little sign to stick in the garden that read; ‘A Lovely Lady And A Grumpy Old Man Live Here.’ I could neither complain nor differ, for it’s true. There's a tendency for men to grow crotchety as the years pile on and the thatch grows thin, while little old ladies appear to grow sweeter as the years go by. I spotted it again recently when I was at a family gathering at which there were maybe half a dozen or more small children screeching around like Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alfonso while the longsuffering speaker fought a valiant battle to do his bit. The children were having a ball – how often I’ve envied the freedom of a tot to either lie down on the floor or have races around pews in church when they’re bored without people thinking you’re a few cards short of a pack?

I scanned the faces of the people as they had their eyes firmly fixed on the menagerie, and all the evidence confirmed my hypothesis; the men were scowling, all of them, and the women were smiling serenely. Then my attention drifted back to the speaker; he was telling of the occasion when Jesus was cross with his disciples for telling the parents to shoo the little ones away from him because he was busy doing important things. He said, ‘Leave them alone. Let them come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’

‘And do you know?’ the speaker continued, ‘Jesus could have lined the children up in a row and prayed a blessing on them. But he didn’t. One by one he sat them on his knee, put his hand on their heads and blessed them.’

Now this particular speaker had a way of helping his listeners to really engage with the story; ‘Imagine your child sitting on Jesus’ knee,’ he said. ‘Imagine yourself straining forward to hear what he was saying. Imagine what sort of people the children grew up to be.’

Who knows, maybe some of them were still around when the Romans levelled the Temple at Jerusalem seventy years later. Maybe some of them became leaders of the first century church, maybe some even died for their faith. They might have grown up to follow him, they might not, but one thing you could probably count on; their lives were never the same again.

It seems to me that most adults don’t even begin to understand the influence they can have on young lives, for good or for ill. I’ve had some experience working with people who were abused as children, and the hurt runs deep, the damage reaches and distorts almost every area of their lives. Seemingly little things, like referring to God as ‘Father’, can cause all sorts of difficulties because the term ‘father’ is often equated with all kinds of ill-treatment ranging from outright brutality to simply being ignored. And yet a kind word, a smile, a little bit of encouragement or affirmation can go such a long way. 

At a more practical level though, we should be kind to our kids, for they’re the ones who might one day sign us into some Old Peoples’ Home!