“It’s snowing!” she squealed with sheer delight, lifting her dazzling smile to the sky and throwing her hands into the air.

“Look, mommy, it’s snowing,” three-year old grandbebe, Bailey, declared as the cottonwood seed-fluff nearly white-out blizzarded on our picnic at the beach the other day.

We were grabbing covers for food and waving it away from our faces with frowns of aggravation. But Bailey saw the fun in it. Right here in the summer sunlight, while she was wearing her cute new swimming suit and playing in the sand: snow.

Sometimes, in an effort to grow up, be mature, represent our religion by “putting away childish things,” we forget that Jesus wants us, for all times, to remain childlike: full of wonder, hope springing eternal, looking for the good in everything around us. “Unless you become as little children,” He said. The path into the Kingdom of heaven starts with that premise.

Jesus: “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless you repent [that is, change your inner self—your old way of thinking, live changed lives] and become like children [trusting, humble, and forgiving], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Amplified

Do you remember? Can you recall when life was an invitation to joy, to experience whatever happened, to see a complication as an adventure to explore? Remember innocence? Whatever will be, will be…

Oliver recently visited the beaches of Florida. This was old hat to him.

Childishness? No. Put that away. Don’t be a selfish, self-centered booger demanding your own way.

But childlike in spirit, in hope, in wonder, like a little one full of innocence and trust, pure-hearted and content in what comes?  Oh yes. Be that.

Even though we all had cottonwood fuzz in our hair, probably ate some in our S’mores and had it stuck to our skin with sunscreen (and I nearly choked on a breath-full walking to our shady picnic area from the beach), it didn’t hurt our day in any way that mattered. Like so many things, tiny annoyances we have come to barely tolerate in life, we should just let the fuzzies float by against the blue of the sky on a sunny June day, like a sweet child would. Like Bailey did.

Childlike.

Played all day

Matthew 18. 1-3 NIV   “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'”

Oh, we stayed until that sun set.

PS- Don’t make fun of colorful Colorado for DIY beaches on homemade lakes. It’s our can-do attitude! We’ve got the Rocky Mountains already. You can’t replicate that.  :)