The boy who appears in the photograph at right, much later in his adult life famously said: "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why." But does anyone appreciate the implications of that saying ~ of Albert Einstein's?
I am privileged to teach a small group of children, ages 8 to 11. Among whom there are at least two of the most brilliant young minds I have ever encountered. At their present age, they are loved by their peers and admired by adults. In just a few years, however, not only will those young person's peers envy them, but most adults will actually begin to fear them.
Yet ~ if Einstein's above-quoted belief is correct (which I believe it mostly is), it may not be one of those little geniuses in my class that God will use to deliver profound insights and breakthroughs, to the world. Genius appears in a great variety of forms; most of which ability is never much recognized and appreciated. Still, God invests every soul with purpose and with gifts.
The world of men, for the most part, is held captive in their minds within ironclad bounds characterized by a sense of normalcy that is conditioned by a widely shared, inherited experience ~ that is to say, the experience of a fallen human nature and the social consequences of that.
In the realm of religion, "the social consequences of that," that is to say, of fallen human nature, tend to produce little hegemonies, local societies politely called congregations. Each of those groups, respectively, quietly contents itself with the unstated belief that its members sufficiently understand, and dutifully obey, the will of God. Meanwhile, famine, wars, poverty, sickness and disease, and myriad other miseries prevail throughout the "developed" world no less than they do amongst the most primitive of cultures. Whilst the power of the Gospel languishes behind staid walls mortared with indifference to the plight of mankind.
Children are largely neglected, or worse. There's precious little in the world, for children. The grownup world is not designed for them. The greed and self-centeredness of adults typically results in a paucity of resources committed to children. Rare is the school that truly exists to serve the interests and wellbeing of kids. Children's hospitals only secondarily exist to help children; at what time such hospitals may not be financially profitable, they cease to exist.
With all my heart I believe that God ~ perhaps repeatedly ~ has sent children into the world, to whom God did vouchsafe miracles of various kinds. I imagine, for example, that the cure for ovarian cancer starved to death, at age 6, in Ethiopia in 1978. And that an efficient and economical technology for desalinating seawater similarly died at a very young age, ironically, due to drinking contaminated water. And that a revolutionary approach to organ regeneration was aborted just a couple of years ago.
Still, God keeps trying. He continues to send new life into the world....
Some day, some unknown young person is going to follow after a radical departure in his mind. He is going to dare to think in ways that have little to do with other people's values or expectations. Or she is going to know ~ intuitively ~ that such and such an idea has merit, notwithstanding that no one else gets it. But will they follow through with those insights and intuition? Will they be helped with guidance and resources needed to explore, to experiment, and to develop those ideas?
Recently, a new species of spider was discovered. It is an amazing little creature. Here is a picture of its web (at right). And here is an article describing that spider and its discoverer. Question: Who teaches those tiny spiders how to weave such intricate structures? The answer, of course, is that God invests every spider of that species with the instinct and ability to create those delicate masterpieces.
But if God is able and willing to give such phenomenal instinct and ability to itsy-bitsy spiders, then what may one imagine is God willing to give to human children? Unfortunately for all of us, children and even young adults are rarely taken seriously.
Revival is very much in the heart and mind and will of God. I am increasingly convinced, however, that it is going to require a radical departure, in order for an uncommon manifestation of God's Spirit to find entrance into the world. And I truly believe that God may even use some child(ren) to do just that.
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