So I've been thinking a lot about the phrase "faith like a child" once again this past week. For those of you who followed my blog over the summer, I wrote a bit about this idea while helping at the orphanage. Being back at Penn State, I unfortunately got pulled back away from kids and hardly even noticed it. Until this last weekend at church when we were eating lunch afterwards and all the adult tables were taken, so I went and ate with the kids. I quickly found myself sitting in the middle of a pretend school where I managed to get in trouble so often that I had detention every day for the rest of the semester. It was great. Block homes were being built on my lap and paper airplane bombers were attacking the bad villain (appropriately assigned to Sean Lobar) the whole lunch. Everything was so innocent again. I realize I need more moments like that at college.

Anyway, so I started thinking about the phrase "faith like a child." Naturally, I found a song that helped me figure some things out. Jars of Clay has a song called "Like A Child" which as the name implies, deals with this very thing. There was one line that really stuck out to me:

"...I wonder if I've grown to lose the recklessness?"

I stared at it for awhile and finally decided to look up the definition of recklessness. According to some random dictionary online, recklessness means: utterly unconcerned about the consequences of some action.

Not helping me a ton, I looked to the bible and found this:

John 12:24
"...anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal."

Reckless in your love. Utterly unconcerned about what people will think or what will happen as a result of your love.

It's neat how every now and then a verse from the bible just stands out to you and clicks. At first I wasn't exactly sure how recklessness fit in to the picture. Was it really all that bad a thing to lose my recklessness. But then I read John 12:24 and I think I began to understand what Jars of Clay may have meant.

So what does it mean to have absolutely no concern about consequences as a result of our love? I guess I always imagine that loving people will simply make everyone happy and will end our problems. Or perhaps that's the easy kind of love I gravitate to, meanwhile avoiding the other kind. The kind that requires you to stand up for and love the outcasts.

I have a sign that hangs above my bedroom door that says "Approach it with Love." I wonder how many situations I approach with love simply because it's the easy choice. Perhaps I should add a word in the middle of that phrase so that it says "Approach it all with Love."

That's the beauty with kids. They have no perception of the labels that our world may apply to the people around us. They don't care whether you have lots of money or toys. All they care about is that they have a common friend to love, be loved, and play with. Give them a few twigs and some grass and they'll be happy all day long.

Thinking back to the orphanage in Tanzania, it was amazing how open and welcoming all the kids were to us when we arrived. They had no idea who we were, what we had done the week before, or even what our motives were for coming to Africa. Even if our reason for traveling to Africa beforehand had been a selfish one, after meeting those kids and spending one day with them, that motive would have been completely erased. It was such a different form of love. Not once while I was there did we talk about love with any of the kids. The words I love you were never said, but it was very evident to everyone sitting around the dinner table the last night we were there that those were the feelings being felt. Those kids knew the day we arrived that we wouldn't be staying with them for long, that at some point we would have to leave for home. Yet even knowing that, they still loved us relentlessly.

I think sometimes in our lives we chose to love the easy ones. I know I'm guilty of thinking that I won't see such and such person for quite some time so loving them isn't as big a deal as loving the person who I see every day. I guess I feel at times that it is not possible to make a difference in such a short amount of time. I guess the kids in Tanzania proved me wrong. Reckless about what would happen from opening up to us, careless about what would happen once we had left, they knew what it meant when John said but if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.