Thought for the Week
June 26 of this year marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of a little girl who was baptised Helen Beatrix Potter and who became world-famous as the creator of such wonderful, timeless characters as Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck, Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester.
Her childhood and youth were of the Victorian uppermiddle class: stuffy, nonchild-centred and lonely.
She never went to school, had private governesses and drawing teachers and so had little experience of the big, outside world until well into mature adulthood.
Yet her books still reach classlessly into the very heart and soul of childhood imagination across the world.
How on earth could that be possible?
Simply because, like her, the world’s most ultimately fulfilled and well-adjusted adults are unashamedly children-who-have-grownup and have openly allowed their childhood to keep developing and enriching them throughout their subsequent lives.
Jesus, on an infinitely greater scale, tells us ( in Matthew 18v3) that unless we adults change and become like little children, born anew by faith in Jesus the Son of God and so children of God, we can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
It’s that fundamental; that urgent; that humbling.
Are you too grown-up for that? Rev Alan Raeburn Locum minister Rutherglen Old Parish Church