Show up!! VI

Out of the mouths of infants and children . . .

 - From Psalm 8

Infants and children have perhaps the greatest wisdom of all. They do not question so much. If they are well cared-for, they accept the leadership of their parents. They learn to respect elders. They become comfortable on being dependent on others. They are okay, if they must defer to someone else. It is good to be taken care of. This is a parent's task. And when they fail in it, they create a generation of angry, bitter, and out-of-control teenagers and college-aged kids. 

"Honor your father and mother." This is not talking about doing wrong, if it's what your parents want. It is talking about acting as though your parents were ideal. Act as though they were fair and nurturing to you. Act as if they said a model of marital and familial fidelity, that you would want to follow. 

But we have a large class of young people today, the Millennial generation, between roughly ages 15 and 35. They were the latchkey kids, the trophy kids. They show up . . . but in the wrong way, at the wrong places! 

Their sense of right and wrong is not applied where they live! They seek personal value by being part of a movement, by seeking "social justice," and forcing others to comply with their wishes, by way of the ballot.

They have the wisdom of infants and children, but the bodies, and the rights, of full adults. 

Infants and children have greater wisdom yet. They are not driven by the hungers and passions of a teenager, or twenty-something. They live in the moment. They find joy in simple things. And they desire no more than the basics . . . they have not learned materialism.

We can learn from them. God has elevated infants and children in the hierarchy of things. 

My grand-nephew loves his great-grandmother. He senses her warm and genuine love for him. She is a widow that appreciates what's eternal, what's really important. Unlike his older cousins, who have found distractions in jobs, school, college, and career, he can stop and focus his attention on the one person in the family that has earned it more than all the others. 

The art and skill of "showing up" is evident in children - the ones that ask to go to "Maw Maw's house" and get everything they need there - - - but not the children, the under-twenty-five children, that are already caught up in Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" lifestyle. These older children show up, all right. But it's in places where they feel like they are doing good for others . . . but the ones that have done more for them never get the benefit of it. 

Show up. In the right places. At the right time. 

Learn from children.