Get your own Free Home PageI Know Where the Clouds are Made
by: Richard S. Clifton
Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 20 (September 26, 1998)
My son came to see me a few days ago, troubled. His 5-year-old son had stolen something from a store while they were out shopping. His worry was two-fold. He was concerned about his reaction to the boy and he was concerned that Ethan was going to grow up to be a juvenile delinquent.
We talked for a while and shared our own experiences. When I was five I took some post cards I wanted from a drug store. My son remembered stealing something from a store when he was about six. We had a good laugh over those incidents.
We finally agreed that "stealing" was not the word to use because stealing implies intent: a fore-knowledge that what you are doing is wrong. A child of five or six is innocent. He may have been told a dozen times what is right and wrong, but lacks the ability to apply a moral sense to all situations. "Taking" the item is probably a better way to express it.
When Christ likened the kingdom of heaven to a child, I believe He had this innocence in mind. I do not believe He meant we should be childish as a way to excuse behavior that goes against the will and law of God. Consider the child for a moment. Consider his or her faith and trust in mom or dad. They believe unquestioningly in most cases.
When I was six, my father and I were driving along a highway. We passed a cement plant which stood outside the city limits of my hometown. It had a pair of huge smokestacks which billowed white steam day and night. My father--not usually given to poetic images--told me that's where God made the clouds that filled the sky.
That seemed plausible enough to me as the sky that day was filled with cottony clouds. The billowing steam reached those clouds. It did not occur to me to question him. I could see these wonderous works with my own eyes. And, after all, this was my father telling me the "truth".
There is an innocence in that unquestioning faith that I wish my adult brain could recapture as I strive towards a more spiritual life. Like most of us, I suppose, I fight worldly thoughts and doubts; my brain wants to question everything.
As young Ethan learns a moral sense from the things he does now, I can learn from his innocence. I can relearn that faith I had as a child in accepting the truth about things I could not possibly understand. If I get frustrated from trying too hard, all I have to do is stop for a moment and remember where the clouds are made. Then I begin to find peace in my God once more.
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