Jesus pointed to children as living parables of the Kingdom — not because they were innocent in some sentimental sense, but because they had not yet learned to mistrust joy. This sonnet listens to the sound of unburdened laughter as if it were already a kind of prayer.
The Sonnet
The summer field is loud with sudden mirth, A scattered chorus rising from the grass, As children claim their small bright square of earth And let the careful hours simply pass. They do not yet rehearse the weight of years, Nor calculate which losses lie ahead, They have no use for caution or for fears, And eat the day as if it were warm bread. What faith is this, that asks no proof at all? What trust, that bears no scars from being wrong? I watch them run, and feel some inner wall Begin to soften at their unforced song. Lord, let me learn what children seem to know: That joy is how the Kingdom comes, and grows.
Reflection
There is something instructive about children at play — and Christ, who saw so clearly, made it explicit. The Kingdom belongs to such as these. Not because childhood is innocent of sorrow (it isn’t), but because children, before they are taught otherwise, expect joy. They lean toward it. They run into it as though it were home.
Adulthood teaches us to be careful with joy, as though it might give out if we lean on it too hard. But this sonnet’s quiet argument is older than caution: joy is how the Kingdom of God arrives. It is not the reward for surviving life. It is the substance of life rightly received. The children, laughing in the sunlight, are nearer the truth than we sometimes are.
May you, today, lean again toward joy without apology — knowing it is not a distraction from the holy work, but part of it.
