{"id":1024,"date":"2012-06-20T14:37:29","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T18:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2012-06-20T15:04:39","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T19:04:39","slug":"the-exceptional-beauty-and-innocence-of-a-young-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/the-exceptional-beauty-and-innocence-of-a-young-child\/","title":{"rendered":"The Exceptional Beauty and Innocence of a Young Child"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last Saturday I spent\u00a0a good part of the\u00a0day with my son David, his beautiful wife Brielle, and the extraordinary young lady who is\u00a0my 19 month-old granddaughter Ella (note the picture).\u00a0 There is something of exceptional beauty and innocence in all young children.\u00a0 When I watch her play, try to talk, and intereact with her surroundings, there is an almost surreal quality to the moment.\u00a0 I had not seen this up close like this (where I would notice) since my three children were born (over 20 years ago now).\u00a0 Such innnocence actually reminds me of what I wish human beings were normally like (at least the innocent part).\u00a0 However, even young children of Ellas’s age\u00a0show signs of temper, rage, and rebellion.\u00a0 I don’t think my son David trained Ella to have those undesired traits.\u00a0 Sin is not merely environmental.\u00a0\u00a0Children don’t just learn to sin from parents and others in\u00a0their lives.\u00a0 No, there is something more serious going on.\u00a0 Men and women are born with sin natures — that is, a propensity to go contrary to God’s design for them (Eph. 2:1-3 among other passages).\u00a0\u00a0 The absolute quandry we were in required the Cross of Christ as the only possible solution to render both the justice and the\u00a0grace of God (Rom. 3:21-26) in our behalf–applied to us by faith and faith alone in Christ’s finished Cross-work.\u00a0 I am thankful for Christ’s work for me in this way.\u00a0 As a result I have hope that my innocence will return — in fact, I’ll have more than I have ever had, complete\u00a0freedom from the presence of sin.\u00a0 When Jesus returns he will begin to make all things right.\u00a0 I long for that day.\u00a0 Until then, I have a glimpse of things to come in the exceptional beauty and innnocence of a young child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday I spent\u00a0a good part of the\u00a0day with my son David, his beautiful wife Brielle, and the extraordinary young lady who is\u00a0my 19 month-old granddaughter Ella (note the picture).\u00a0 There is something of exceptional beauty and innocence in all young children.\u00a0 When I watch her play, try to talk, and intereact with her surroundings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}