Perfect Children

I spent the weekend with a bunch of great people, some of whom were young men who are residents of a local juvenile facility. The rest of us were not juvenile, we just acted that way.


Life in the juvenile facility is tough, but probably not as tough as life outside the juvenile facility for most of these guys. That kind of life requires close attention to self-protection; protection from harm, physical and emotional. That kind of life requires one to build a wall of protection. It may not be made of steel and concrete, but this wall of protection is just as real and just as formidable as the walls that surround the facility in which they spend their days.



But for a couple of days this weekend, some of the walls were compromised. Some walls came crashing down, others simply cracked enough to allow a peephole to be formed. But for a few hours we were allowed to see these children of God as He intended them to be. There were smiles, laughter, chatter, singing, stomping, sharing ,compassion and tears.



I've always had trouble with Paul's analysis of the human condition as "filthy rags". I believe that each one of us is really a child of God, just as perfect as He created us. We are merely hidden by the walls we build, or the baggage we stack around us. The only things filthy about us are those with which God never meant for us to be encumbered. We started out as perfect children, and it is God's desire that we all be restored to that perfection.



There is nothing so beautiful as the faces of the children of God in those moments when they are revealed. There were a bunch of us revealed this weekend, those who live in those dorms at Vacca, and those of us who were just visiting. I'm not sure that heaven will be much more than that, all of us being together, restored to the perfect children that God created.