Last week I happened upon a merry-go-round. It was not operating when I saw it, but I could almost hear the music and laughter of children as I looked at it. When I was very small, I loved a merry-go-round ride.

The colors, the lights, the music; it was all so exciting!

The horses moving up and down while they also moved in a circle, the mirrors in the middle reflecting all of the motion; at that certain age is was magical.  I haven’t seen one of these in years; they are so Victorian in a way that still has the ability to charm and enchant…

A merry-go-round isn’t for older kids, you have to be really little.  When you’re older, they just don’t grab the imagination in the same way, they aren’t fast enough, they become “lame>”

So sad, don’t you think?  Where does the magic of childhood go, that time when things seem so fresh, so exciting and so good?  I don’t think that there was any mistake or coincidence that Jesus said that we must be like little children if we want to enter the Kingdom of  Heaven. Of course on a theological level that’s because little children are innocent of sin, but I think there is more to it; they have no guile.  They can see the things of God for what they really are: Wonderful, wholesome and true.  As we grow up, we don’t always see these things so clearly, for we become cynics, we look for things to criticize and angles from which to extract only what benefits ourselves.  Little ones aren’t burdened with this.

In Christ, however, we have a chance to begin anew; a chance to let the baggage we had accumulated fall away.

If only we really would just let that garbage go! We could once again, in a certain sense, become as little children in spirit and in truth.