Thought for the Week

Many years ago, I was looking after Mark, who was four years old.

Mark was a delightful child, full of energy and mischief, as every four-year-old should be. We had a great day together and Mark was an amazing teacher. He had a wonderfully fresh knowledge of nature, perhaps because he was closer in his innocence to the creator of all things than I was.

Everything he encountered brought him pleasure and lots of questions.

Mark was bright, insightful and quite the little philosopher.

One story he told me has never left me. The story doesn’t matter in itself, but it was Mark’s comments that left me dumbstruck.

After he told me his story, I asked Mark what his parents said about it all. Mark paused for a moment and then said: ‘Well that all happened before I could speak, so I couldn’t tell them about it.’

I had really never thought about that before. We smile when children speak in their own special ‘gobbledegook’ but perhaps we should stop and try to work out what they are trying to say to us.

There is a lovely story, allegedly true, that a young girl of about four was delighted when her newborn sister was brought home.

She kept asking her parents to leave her alone in the room with the baby.

The parents were reluctant, but decided that as they had an intercom, no harm could be done and they granted the request.

Imagine their thoughts as they heard their daughter whisper to the baby: ‘Remind me what God is like, because I’ve almost forgotten.’

How appropriate that we are told in scripture that ‘a little child shall lead us’.