Me ~  (My photo)

A child—if it lives in an environment where it is allowed to be itself—has no problems. Children aren’t worried about money, food, or clothing. They are like the birds and the lilies Jesus speaks about. They figure they will always get what they need. Nothing needs to be stored. There will always be enough.

Children live in a glorious freedom. Even the smallest, insignificant gift can mean pure bliss for them, because it is received in the present moment. The joy of the present moment is not darkened by worries of a difficult past or a threatening future. Children’s ability to be present in the moment means that every moment has a gift to give and that every little occasion of joy is appreciated.

This presence in the moment also means that children make no separation between play and seriousness. Play itself is taken very seriously. They don’t perceive mistakes as calamities; they count on forgiveness as self-evidently as they count on daily food.

This lack of worry is slowly lost as we grow up and become “adult.” Life becomes full of “problems”—modern variation of the worries Jesus tells us we don’t need. Our time is a time of problems, and can only be such, because everything becomes problematic when we no longer know whether there is a Father who takes care of us. But if we return to the Father, we return to the glorious freedom of a child.

 
~ A Meditation by Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

❤

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke