“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I Corinthians 13:11

I held her hand as we both sang together. I looked down into her bright bold eyes and thought, what is going on in this 8-year-old head right now?  She was full of smiles and I could see that she thought something of me.

As we marched around and sang, us in our own world, I couldn’t help but wonder why children would give up their childhood for adulthood. It seemed to me at that moment that childhood was the best thing there could be.

I held up my fingers for him to count with and he put up his so he could shoot my fingers down. Making his hand into a gun he begin his mission to get the answer:

Boom! One, BOOM! Two, Boom! Three, Boom! Four!…

I know the answer!  He said. I drew my breath. Not knowing whether to use this  moment to teach him about the dangers of guns or get upset at the computer gaming system he loves so much. I made sure I didn’t encourage it.  Laughing was the last thing on my mind. But the children around him seemed to understand and laughed with him. They laughed so much, he began to mimic a robot.

As I sat there with her and her brother, they traced the designs on my clothing and couldn’t stop touching the buttons on my hat. I wondered what was going through their heads. But couldn’t wonder for long. I like the buttons on my hat to much to leave them to little Curious George and his sister.

When she came up to me with a bright pink diamond like button and offered it to me to add to the collection to my hat, I couldn’t help but laugh. She clearly thought I put those buttons on myself. Do they look that out-of-place?

“For now we see though a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

I Corinthians 13: 12-13