The hopes of children and invention of new colours

On a dark cold winter night as I left the Leisure Centre just before closing time I noticed them ...suspended in the foyer, the stars that primary school children had made expressing their Christmas wishes and hopes for 2026. A surprising number asked for peace in the world and to see more of their family. And then there was this one which included the following:

I hope Oban gets a Macdonalds
I hope that more colours are invented
I hope the everyone has a merry Christmas
I hope that the women in Sudan are okay.

What wonderful young human beings, able to express the joy and hopes of childhood whilst being aware that all is not well with our world. It's been a crazy roller coaster ride in the month since these stars were put up and it is easy to despair for humanity and our future. We are reminded though by George Herbert;

And for all this, nature is never spent;

     There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
     Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
     World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Children are part of that dearest freshness that wells up in generation after generation. And so I walked into the winter night with a smile on my face because somewhere in Oban there are children looking for new colours who are yet aware that women in Sudan may not be okay. That young children can express both pathos and creativity means that even as the day ends in the west, and all may seem dark , we can know that the world does keep turning and that God has not given up on us yet.

This Sunday is Candlemas when we remember Jesus being brought to the Temple, it is a day of hope over despair and light in the darkness and in many churches includes the blessing of the candles. At one time there was a charming custom called “creeping of the candles.” A member of the household, often the youngest, carries a candle while walking around the darkened house. This act symbolizes the return of light and the banishment of shadows.

It was Jesus who said except you become like little children you cannot enter the kingdom of God. They have much to teach us.

In all our earnestness and conviction in tackling the ills of our world, we should never lose our sense of play and imagination for along with finding justice, new colours can be invented.

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