Our Childlike Innocence

     I watched a television show the other day. It was a talent show for children. All of them were talented but I notice another thing that they had in common it was their childlike innocence. Even though their bodies were small, they each seem to have great big hearts. When they said I love you to the host of the show, I believed them. I truly believe that they had a warm feeling of love for him. Children are welcoming to strangers, they will see them as no threat at all. They will give a stranger a hug just like they do to their own moms and dads.
     Children are very optimistic, they believe that they can do and be anything that they want to be. There is no us and them in their outlook on life. In their eyes they see everyone as equals. They see everyone accepting each other as loving friends. Most of the time if they have something, they will share it with others. If someone did hurt their feelings, they will still be open to forgive them if the other person is sorry for their actions. They will respect others and be genuinely interested in what someone has to say.
     We all start out as these beautiful little big-hearted angels and then something happen to change us. Somewhere in our lives we lost that childlike, that angelic like innocence. We start out as near perfect spiritual beings and then somehow evil took a hold on us and changed our near perfect outlook on life. In our lives our optimism has become less and so did our friendliness toward others. The warmth within our hearts as grown a little colder. In our selfishness, we take and do not share. We quickly condemn and judge others rather than to give them our respect.
     What has happen to our childlike innocence? We started out with a hundred percent and then somehow we end up in a low percentile range. The precious treasure that we had inside of us, the world was more that happy to take it away. I have seen some rushing to get rid of it so to become more worldly than spiritual. They took that precious purity from God and eagerly discard it as it was not worth anything to them. I for one, wish I had it all back again. We all started out like lambs of God and then in time we became more like the opposite like wild beasts fighting in the field.
     The answer to most of our mental health problems is to regain what we have lost or even thrown away, to value that to which we thought was worthless. We had it all in the beginning and we let it slip through our fingers. We acted in a perfect way at one time and then we went in a wrong direction. We quickly got rid of our innocence, thinking to ourselves a worldly type of lifestyle was the way to go. We left our innocence behind us and trade it for something less. We were close to God as a child then we lost that close connection when we became an adult. We cannot go back to being a child but we can now and in the future start to live our lives in more pure spiritual way, the way that God intended us to be, an adult with a childlike heart.

Matthew 18:1-4 "At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" ²And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them ³and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."