I’ve always found it amusing the way young children love wellies, the sun can be cracking the flags and even so, the choice of footwear for a lot of children will be their wellington boots, I can remember both my children going through the phase and my grandson, who used to refer to them as wee-wo’s which amused us. While most of us will walk along paths, carefully dodging puddles, children of a certain age, dressed in their appropriate footwear will go out of their way to have a really good splash in a puddle. I think that one of our reactions to the lock down experience could be that we don our wellie boots, find a decent puddle and have a right good splash, I’m sure that it will make us feel so much better. We have so much to learn from small children and yet we feel that it is our job to educate them.
I used to enjoy going into schools to lead assemblies, we have a wealth of wonderful stories in the Bible, both old and new testament and time and again we read about people who have stood up for what is right and gone out of their way to oppose what is wrong. Maybe we look back through history and note how people have stood against injustice, in recent times there has been a focus on Black Lives Matter, there is an ongoing fight against slavery in the world, even now after the slave trade was apparently abolished. We have seen people in care homes fighting the government over decisions made during the earlier part of the pandemic. We have seen how the footballer Marcus Rashford took on the government over the free school meals that children would not receive during the school holidays.
This week has seen the leaders of the nation’s gather to discuss climate change. There have been many and varied reactions to teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg from Stockholm, you might love her or hate her, but she has succeeded where others have failed, it seems fascinating to me that a young girl can make such a difference, she has made world leaders listen and she is by no means a solitary figure, speak to children and they have a clearer understanding of climate change than most adults. I am reminded of the image where a pebble is dropped into a pool, the ripples start from the point the pebble hits the water and over a very short space of time they move out across the face of the water until the still water is agitated to the very edges.
As individuals, as a community, as a church, we need to be people who stand up against what is wrong in the world. It will never be easy, the moment we decide to make a splash we move out of our comfort zones and we make ourselves vulnerable, people will disagree with us, stand in our way, even threaten us, to try to stop us and for some of us, that alone will stop us. I believe that it is good for us to encourage our little ones to splash in puddles, maybe we are starting them on a journey of making a splash in the world as they grow up. If as fuddy-duddy oldies we are to learn one solitary lesson from our little ones, it to never accept the status quo, but make a splash.
A prayer for this week:
Pray for a successful summit; that the climate crisis may be understood; there will be global unity to reach courageous decisions and global political leadership to ensure urgent action protecting even the most vulnerable.