“To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.” – Titus 1:15

Have you ever found some artifact from your distant past–a book, a souvenir from a family vacation, a CD–and reflected on how much life has changed since you last held that thing in your hands?

When you last read those words, touched the edges of that familiar nic-nac, pressed “Play” on that disc and absorbed the melodies coming from it 10…15…20 years ago, you had some form of worldview of what life was like. You had hopes of what your life would become one day. You hadn’t considered how or when your relationships could or would go away. You had no idea the people you’d meet who would bring you great gladness or open your eyes to beauty. Or introduce you to a pain you wouldn’t dare–or even know how–to imagine.

Sometimes, I’ll come across something–maybe a picture or a note from high school or college–I shake my head and grin as I face that younger me and reflect on how hard I tried to be funny. Or cool. Or anything else that I wasn’t. Can’t say I ever thought I had the world all figured out, but I certainly always wanted it to like me–and worked countless angles to make it so. The world scared me before I even really stepped out into it.

Now, what really makes my heart weigh a few pounds heavier are those pieces from my pre-adolescent-era life. When the only hurt I knew were my parents’ spankings and confirmations that, no, we weren’t going to Chuck-E-Cheese for dinner. So much innocence. Not that I acted innocently–hence the spankings. But I didn’t even know to expect anything out of life outside of countless pick-up baseball games, Little Debbie snacks in my school lunch and agonizing countdowns to overnight trips at the grandparents’.

The last time I read through the pages of a Henry Huggins book was at my son’s age of nine. My kids like me to read about Henry and Ribsy and Ramona Quimby’s adventures out loud, which I’m more than glad to do. Just like my son and seven year-old daughter now, when I last read this story, I didn’t know rejection nor had I ever betrayed anyone who trusted me and broke their hearts.

I hadn’t failed an important test or lost a job…nor lost a loved one…yet.

I hadn’t faced the fear of growing old alone or wondering where the money was going to come from to pay my mortgage.

I didn’t pine for the someone else’s approval of me to affirm that I was OK, in my humanness, as it was.

I hadn’t questioned if God really liked me, much more, loved me.

I hadn’t really messed anything up yet.

And then, for a minute, comes a deep longing to go back to that moment. Before I’d scarred or been scarred. When I read that book or listened to that song free of nagging pains of what my sin has done or what others’ sins have done to me circling my consciousness.

This is all kind of heavy thinking, for sure. Not to back-pedal, but it’s not that I live in this space 24-7. There’s freedom from that sort of misery. And I’m grateful for the journey toward that, fully. But how beautiful is that innocence. The kind I see in my 10 year-old son and seven year-old daughter, yet very much does dwindle away a little by the hour as travelers exposed to the World’s destined-for-death elements.

An author named John A. Ritenbough once wrote:

A well-known series of scriptures, beginning in Matthew 18:1, touches on innocence and its destruction. It starts with a question from the disciples: “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus replies that unless we become as little children, we will not be in the Kingdom of Heaven. Is not the beauty of their innocence and the harmless vulnerability of little children a major reason why we find them so adorable? They produce no harm, shame, or guilt. But what happens as they become adults? They become sophisticated, worldly, cosmopolitan, cynical, suspicious, sarcastic, prejudiced, self-centered, cool, uninvolved, and many other negative things. They also seem to lose their zest for life. Sin does that.

Of course, we can never become children again; and none of us really want that anyway, really. God mercifully gifts us with wisdom (James 1:5) and discernment (Proverbs 2) as we persevere to mature through life (James 1:4), in spite of what we’ve done and what we’ve been exposed to. To live in naiveté as an adult is novel, but it’s also dangerous–which is why children can be rarely left unattended–and dumb.

I don’t know that I’ll experience the same “zest for life” again until heaven. Which makes me all the more eager to get there, though I also don’t want to die anytime soon. Father, give us the faith to believe that we are, in fact, whole and seen as flawless in your sight because–only because–Jesus’ blood has made us that way. Let us be glad in that above any and all of our deceitful hearts’ (Jeremiah 17:9) guilt or shame.