Honey for a Child's Heart

There is a kind of magic in words. God spoke and created a world, the Bible says.  In the same sense, you and I speak and we create a world, too –a world for someone else to live in. Think back in your own life and remember the times when words created a world for you—a world that influenced your view of yourself, of truth, of others.

Words are important from the very beginning. I was with a brand new father in a family birthing room last week.  My grandson was holding his first born, wrapped in a receiving blanket, not even bathed as yet. He was talking to her, telling her about her family, how much she was loved, holding her close and softly using language to welcome her to this world. It’s the reason new parents are told to talk to babies while they are being cared for-- the murmur of language, the use of words which are so vital to a healthy child.

Hearing this, a young mother once asked me what she should say to an infant who was “unable to respond.” Oh, they will respond all right, I said—with smiles and kicks and hand movements. How do you think, “Rub-a-dub dub, three men in a tub…”began? Or “Rock-a-bye, baby, in the treetops” or dozens of other nursery rhymes? In the beginning it doesn’t need to be profound, but words have a music in them, a sound of sensibility, and our babies grow in special ways as they hear these sweet sounds.

Words matter. In a world so filled with meaningless noise and shouting, it’s important to think about the gift of language. Human beings are the only creatures who use words to express ideas both abstract and concrete. In fact, I would say that God has made us word-partners with himself. The gift of language is one of the ways in which we are created in his image.

We take these shining symbols known as words, and when they are strung together in the right way, they open up a whole new world to us.  I can tell you who I am and how I feel, and you can do the same to me. Words can help us see places we have never been, and know people we have never met. Words can introduce us to truth and break our hearts with the sheer beauty of their meaning.

Take all the words in the dictionary and you have simply a list of words and their meanings, but put these words together imaginatively and they give wings to the spirit.  Every child ought to know the pleasure of words so well spoken that they awaken sensibility to the world and new understanding of what is true. That’s why a wise man wrote the proverb: A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. The right word in the right place is a magnificent gift.

I was asked to be a special guest teacher in a Family Living class at a local university. As the students filed in, most of them with a sullen demeanor and certainly showing no interest in family living or any living at all. I figured out quickly that Family Living was a snap course and that is why they were there. How to begin to capture students reading Time magazine or feigning sleep? So I began with "Home is a safe place."

 It was an emotional experience for me because as I talked about home everyone came to attention. Later when I asked for discussion and reaction to what I had presented, one of the most "way-out" appearing students asked, "How can a person find a safe place? I've been looking for one all my life." Class participation was not a problem. I could scarcely believe how hungry students were for the kind of home I had been talking about. My question to them, "How prepared are you to be someone who produces this kind of "safeness?"

Isn't it an inconsolable longing in all of us to find a place of acceptance, a safe place where we are known and loved?  Think about this when you see your own little children trying out "life" as they grow and express themselves.

Home is one of the most emotionally evocative words in our language. Home is a place where you belong. Home is a safe place—that’s my favorite definition. It’s a place where it is safe to be who you are. You are special. You don’t need to be like your brother or your sister because you are YOU. Every one, no matter how old, longs for just such a place.

Who creates such a place as home? You and I do. As soon as our life links up with another life we take on this responsibility. How can we do this? Firstly, it means that we are safe people to live with and know. This is a strong concept, not a weak, wishy-washy one. It takes inner discipline and it is also called love.

Safe people create safe places. Their words may correct, but they do not destroy or scar. Words are not a put-down, but an aid to help someone become all they were meant to be. Discipline should build disciples, not rebels.

One day when we were living in the country our little kindergarten boy got off the school bus and hurried into the house. He slammed the back door and leaned against it, his cheeks rosy and his eyes shining.  He said, “Wow. I like that bus driver.  He treats me like I am a people!” Our five-year-old was having a tough time adjusting to an angry bus driver shouting at a bus full of noisy children who paid no attention to what he said. But this substitute driver wasn’t mad; he talked to the children as they got off the bus; he called them by name. Suddenly riding the bus had less trauma; it felt safer. And now he was home—where he would also be treated like a people.  What a gift!