PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

April 10, 2024

THROUGH THE IMAGINATION OF CHILDREN

The first weekend in April two of our grandchildren, Irene and Maximus, came to visit Diane and myself.  Saturday our focus turned to Maximus’ upcoming fourth birthday.  In a spirit of fun, I suggested that he might consider celebrating his sixteenth birthday instead of his fourth.  Then, when he was seventy, he could celebrate his fifty=eighth.

Since Irene’s ninth birthday is not too far off, I suggested she could celebrate her twentieth birthday.  This would all her to drive and would make her just a short of being twenty-one.  Then when she was seventy, she could celebrate her fifty-ninth birthday.

My suggest would seem to solve two problems.  When people are young, they would like to be older.  When people are old, they would like to be younger.  In fact, some seem to lose track of a few years of their life experiences as the total begins to mount up.

When I told this story to some friends, they had another positive for the suggestion.  By jumping ahead eleven or twelve years, Irene’s and Maximus’ parents would be spared having to deal with most of their teenage years.

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that time is relative to one’s position and speed.  Theoretically, it would be possible for a person to leave the earth at near the speed of light and return some years later to discover that they were the same age as one of their grandchildren.  On their return, they would literally turn back the clock.

Jesus suggests that one need to become like children if one wants to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3).  Just exactly where is this heaven of which Jesus speaks? It is located in some far-off place of our known universe?  For many years this was the prevailing thought.

Today, we know that we live in a world that is very likely more than four dimensional.  There is more to it than space and time.  These other dimensions are only known through the miracle of mathematical calculations.  We can only speculate about their nature form. Cout it be that heaven exists in one of these dimensions?

One of the charms of children’s literature is that it is not limited to the restraints of a four-dimensional world with all of its laws and assumptions.  Time travel is possible.  All sorts of creatures and animals exist.  One is given permission to think outside the box.  All kinds of wonderful worlds are open to children through the miracle of the written and spoken world.  In these mysterious places children learn the lessons, values, and principles that will serve them well in the “real” world.

A possible way of interpreting Jesus’ admonition that we need to become like children is that we need to have their gift of imagination to think outside the box of a world dictated by the five senses and human logic.  Such thinking would allow us to explore mysterious worlds where new adventures await and eternal truths are to be discovered.

I am going through one of my periodic readings of Rex stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries.  Once again I have been drawn into the world of Wolfe’s old brownstone in New York city where he soles crimes with the help of Archie Goodwin.  I have read these adventures so many times that they have almost come to be true stores from the past.

Irene and Maximus knew that they could not be twenty and sixteen on their next birthdays.  But it was fund to imagine for a while it might be like if it were possible.  For a few short minutes, I entered their world where anything is possible, where marvelous adventures await, and the secrets of life can be discovered.

(This article was originally published April 10, 2011.  Comments may be sent to davidh15503@embarqmail.com.)