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“Verity
- the quality or state of being true or real; Balderdash – nonsense.”
Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary
God’s Wife
Verities & Balderdash
By Bob Robinson
I love children, don’t you? Sometimes you want to grab an ear and
twist it when they are behaving… well… like children. But you don’t.
Common sense tells you there are better ways to help children learn the
lessons of life.
Lessons, we hope, that will make them better adults.
But the most precious part about children is what they sometimes say,
simply because they are… well… children. I may have shared this with
you before. If I haven’t, you might want to have a box of tissues close
by. Just in case.
If I have? Well, I think it’s worth another read. Don’t you?
Teacher Debbie Moon’s first graders were discussing a picture of a
family. One little boy in the picture had a different hair color than
the other members. One of her students suggested that he was adopted.
A little girl said, ‘I know all about adoption, I was adopted.’
‘What does it mean to be adopted?’ asked another child.
‘It means’, said the girl, ‘that you grew in your mommy’s heart instead
of her tummy!’
On my way home one day, I stopped to watch a Little League baseball
game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind
the bench on the first-base line, I asked one of the boys what the
score was.
‘We’re behind 14 to nothing,’ he answered with a smile.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.’
‘Discouraged?’ the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. ‘Why
should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.’
Whenever I’m disappointed with my spot in life, I stop and think about
little Jamie Scott. Jamie was trying out for a part in the school play.
His mother told me that he’d set his heart on being in it, though she
feared he would not be chosen.
On the day the parts were awarded, I went with her to collect him after
school. Jamie rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement.
‘Guess what, Mom,’ he shouted, and then said those words that will
remain a lesson to me. ‘I’ve been chosen to clap and cheer.’
The next door neighbor of a four-year-old child was an elderly
gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the
little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap,
and just sat there.
When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little
boy just said, ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry.’
An eye witness account from New York City, on a cold day in December,
some years ago… A little boy, about 10 years old, was standing before a
shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and
shivering with cold.
A lady approached the young boy and said, ‘My, but you’re in such deep
thought staring in that window!’
‘I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,’ was the boy’s reply. The
lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk to
get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could
give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.
She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing
her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet and dried them with the
towel. By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a
pair upon the boy’s feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied
up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him.
She patted him on the head and said, ‘No doubt, you will be more
comfortable now.’ As she turned to go, the astonished kid caught her by
the hand, and looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, asked
her…
‘Are you God’s wife?’
Remember, verities should be thought provoking; balderdash is nonsense.
See you next time.
Bob Robinson is the
retired editor of The Daily Advocate, Greenville, Ohio, a Senior
Scribe, a Director of the Senior Scribes Scholarship Fund and Editor of
County News Online. If you wish to receive a daily notification of
CNO’s commentaries, opinions and reports, send your email address to:
countynewsonline@gmail.com. Feel free to express your views.
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