Often after facing my own shame and coming to the end of any need to "fix" or "improve" myself, God's grace seems to enter that empty space and I have this wonderful sense of being clean, pure, fully forgiven, and restored to a state of innocence.  Oh that it would permeate my being and stay forever!  I can live with it.  I have been touched in such ways this week.  I treasure those times.

Nothing is much more beautiful or compelling in a human being than innocence.  Innocent means "free from guilt." I think innocence also has a kind of unself-consciousness about it that is part of the beauty.  Being conscious that one's innocence is beautiful tarnishes it.

There are a couple of places innocence is likely to be seen. One is in a young child, where the dictionary definition of "lack of experience of life or knowledge of the bad things in the world" seems to fit. "Unspoiled" might be another word for it.  They just aren't familiar with the "bad" of life - they believe they are good and the world is good and they live like it.

Yes, I know.  Not for long.  They soon catch on and figure out that something is wrong, and they often come to believe it is something about them.  It surely couldn't be any of these other big people in their world because parents know more and they treat children the way they should be treated.  The emotional conclusion?  "If I am treated badly, it is because I am bad."  And so they begin to put into place their own programs for happiness, not realizing those plans will someday be exposed as totally useless, and they may, after those plans fail, experience the wonderful taste of being a child again.

The other place where innocence is likely to be seen is in a person who has been forgiven of sin that has been held against them for a long time, primarily by themselves. (It's one thing to believe God has forgiven oneself; it's quite another to forgive oneself.)  Some of my most moving moments are being with persons who have finally been given the grace to forgive themselves for what they believe to be sin that they should never be forgiven for.  Like an abortion, for instance.

I still see the face of a mother that was transformed by her willingness to finally forgive herself for an abortion almost 20 years earlier.  She had figuratively and literally tortured herself for years, at some level trying to make the wrong right by making herself pay.  Her believe in and love for Jesus now is as beautiful as her new sense of innocence.  I think she would have no problem seeing Jesus, running to Him, jumping on his lap and throwing her arms around him, oblivious to the onlooking, perhaps judgmental crowd, enjoying to the utmost the sense of being a fully loved innocent child of His.

That is what Jesus can do.  He finds no joy in seeing how we torture ourselves for our failures and shortcomings and he works to get us into a place where we finally open ourselves to receive the restoration and healing of our souls - the very souls that we have made a mess of through our own ego-driven efforts.

So, part of the invitation to become as a child is an invitation to innocence, to an unchecked trust in the goodness of the Parent and one's value and loveability as His/Her child.  A wonderful starting point for a growing love relationship!

"God, I have spent way too much time and effort trying to get cleaned up so I can experience myself as a worthy person.  Wasted effort, isn't it?  Help me to long for the sense of innocence that can only come through an abandoned trust in You and help me to want that more than protection from humiliation, so that my love for You and others is untarnished by self-interest.  Amen"