Learning From Children Playing

One of the great blessings being at a parish with a School is that I get to witness some incredible amounts of energy in just watching the children play either outside on the playground or in the gym.

Sometimes it is funny just to stand by and watch them run around and play to see what they will come up with. They will chase each other, climb on the equipment, lay down in the grass, throw a ball, sit on the bench, spin in circles, or whatever else. Sometimes they even have what I call a crash, they fall down or they run into each other, but the thing that is great about kids, is that they are pretty durable, when they fall down, they get right back up. Usually they will just get right back up, brush off their clothes, and be on their way, but other times they need some help they will go and get a Band-aid or an ice pack.

The great thing is that in making those mistakes they learn from them. When they get hurt on something, they often times are more careful around it… at least for a little while. Then most of the time they are right back into doing the same things again or learn a better way of doing it. We can sometimes learn from our children, that when we fall down, we should get right back up, even though physically, this gets harder and harder as we gain in life experience.

This same thing goes for our spiritual life as well. We kind of go on our way running around and living our life until we trip over something or we are not paying attention and just fall down and sin by either committing one or omitting something. The key is that we need to get back up again and start over, but also, we need to remind ourselves that somethings that we run into cause us to fall and we need to try and avoid them, just like kids do.

Sometimes when we fall in that spiritual life, we need that ice pack or Band-aid and that is the sacrament of confession that thing that helps us to get rid of the injury. Also, just like kids we cannot let the failures that we have keep us on the sidelines, we need to get back up, put on the Band-aid and get back to doing what we need to be doing. The running around and playing for kids is a way to get some exercise and also entertainment for them, our prayer life is a way for us to recharge ourselves in our daily life.

When we take that time to spend with God, he will lead us to where we need to go and even help us to see the dangers that we can trip over so that we can learn from them.

Fr. Ken Halbur