I AM TOO OLD

Few weeks ago I had a nice roving-town time with some wonderful friends. It was a heck of an outing. We went from free pleasure centers to well-paid attractions.  We got into a big mall and I saw, laid together in a cartoon, a gathering of birds. The birds were the angry ones!

If you have played around with mobiles and tablets especially the Android family, you would recognize the ANGRY BIRDS.

When I got home and they all gathered to welcome me, I began handing out the toys. They had an elastic rope attached and once you bump the birds into some object, they emit a disco kind of light. This was the major attraction, especially at night and I was also excited about the concept. I handed them different colours and a pack of biscuits each. I made their day as they all went away very happy. I knew the birds were in for a terrible time!

Minutes later I heard a knock on my door, it was dark already and just outside the door, stood Queen, she was the oldest child in the compound. Still a small girl but the oldest. “Uncle Charles, what of Faith’s angry bird”, she asked.

Geez! I was amazed. Faith was her youngest sister and last born in the family. She cant mouth words yet and I hadn’t considered that she knew enough to play with toys. Yet her eldest sister stood there asking her toy on her behalf.

Didn’t she consider what I went through to buy the amount of toys I bought?

Didn’t she consider I had done enough for her siblings already?

Didn’t she consider that I bought it out of my own free will?

Then I remembered that she was a child and was innocent of any such issues and suddenly I became sorry. Sorry that I had been segregational in my assessment of the children.

I didn’t have any toy left to give her so she left and probably the four girls had to share the three toys or so I think.

Many days have passed and I still wonder how much she had borne in mind coming to ask me for her sister’s absent toy.

Was she being an elder sister or just a child? Was she being concerned or an Oliver Twist? Was she acting the part of a brother’s keeper or she merely didn’t want to share? I cannot answer these questions but I am sure of one thing. She is a child and thinks like one. I am an adult and I think like one but I passed through her stage and I can tell what it feels like. 

 Innocence is a good thing and it does not consider sentiments or harm, neither does it envisage trouble lurking in corners. I still wish that I would act like a child in matters relating to life when I present my life before God on a daily basis. I still desire that I would be a child in matters that hurt the heart and tame the mind, I still hope that my innocence would surface when the world least expects it. I do pray that I would be like a child in all necessary ramifications because the WORD I daily encounter is true to every punctuation

“And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”        Matthew 18:3