Jesus famously commends the faith of children:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Matthew 18:1-6

The Faith of A Child. The Humility of a child. The Welcoming of a child. The Protecting of a child. These things are important to Jesus. Vitally important.

G.K. Chesterton riffs on an aspect of childlike faith in a quote that is often repeated in my house. Whenever we feel curmudgeony skepticism or impatient boredom gaining the upper hand–edging out our wonder–you may hear someone say: “It is we who have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

Here’s the longer quote for those of you who are interested:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

C.S. Lewis, too, weaves a similar theme in his writings–made very explicit in a couple of other quotes (below). Hopefully they help you find your inner child, and you too may have a moment of wonder and utter gratitude for the miraculous life that is blooming all around you.

The first quote is addressed to his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, and is the inscription to his immortally famous, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The second comes from one of his essays.

TO LUCY BARFIELD

My dear Lucy,

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be

your affectionate Godfather,

C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, inscription.

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But then on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development: When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

C.S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” in Of Other Worlds, 38.