Unless You Become Like Children

UNLESS YOU BECOME LIKE CHILDREN....

 

December and January is picnic season for school children. Unlike earlier days when children were taken to museums, zoos or places of historical or religious importance for picnic the modern day educational trips are to holiday resorts and water 🏄 parks. Commercial compulsions.

 

This picnic was to one of the very nearby resorts to Mumbai - just a few minutes drive beyond Bhayander creek on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad NH. We had a good number of small kids - about 400+ primary kids and 100 pre-primary kids. Huge number means huge responsibility which my son never understood because he always felt jealous whenever I told him about school picnics.

 

The resort was really overcrowded that day. There was another school with 700 children and there were many youngsters and families because it was a Saturday. My teachers were religiously following the instructions I had given them the previous evening. As usual I was all over the resort to ensure that everything was going smooth.

 

I had stationed some teachers at the entrance of the wave pool to stop small kids from entering. After every round I made in the resort I always came back to this entrance because I thought something might go wrong if children entered there.

 

Immediately after lunch I practically rushed to this spot and I was happy that one of the loyal support staff was already there before me. Suddenly I noticed a first standard boy coming to me with another boy of his age with a cut on the lips and blood all over. He said, "Raj sir, he fell down."

 

Without wasting any time on enquiries I told my support staff to take him to the nurse. Ten minutes later, the support staff returned and said, "The nurse applied medicine and she told me to inform his class teacher. I didn't know who his class teacher was. I took him to all teachers of Grade - 1 but no one recognized him."

 

I was surprised. He went on to say, after enquiry, he found that the injured child belonged to the other school.

 

I just wondered at the great heart of that little boy. He didn't even know who the injured child was and yet he decided to do his bit to help the one in need. He had no reasons for not helping his neighbour. At such a tender age of 5 he thought it was his duty to help his neighbour and that speaks volume of his upbringing.

 

It reminded me of a Bible quote, "Unless you become like little children you will not go to the Kingdom of God." I understood the meaning of this Bible verse this day at the age of 48.