I feel like it isn't always seen as a good thing. Like innocence is really just a code-word for oblivious. I feel like sometimes our culture tries to say that we are supposed to be guilty and that's what we should grow up to become. Personally I want to be innocent. I believe that we can't pretend that everything's all okay but I don't want to be called guilty.
How can I change that? How can I affect and change the norm? I think that the world needs a little more innocence. Innocence that can take the place of our shame and skepticism. Innocence doesn't mean being perfect and undamaged. I believe that I am innocent; and boy am I broken... I sometimes feel like I have reason to be skeptical or bitter. But I don't want those things! I want to be innocent and unbroken. To be innocent means to be willing to forgive, to be willing to trust, and try again. To be willing to possibly make a fool of yourself but for all the right reasons. It is my wish to be innocent.
I don't think that innocence means being ignorant or oblivious to the world's problems. I think innocence is found in being unjaded. (Yeah I made the word up =D ).
Jesus was truly innocent. He never sinned, and he had the other kind of innocence too. He didn't ignore the world's problems, he embraced them. He lived the the mess-ups. He hung out with the poor, the sick,the people that no one liked or wanted to be. He was unjaded enough to put faith in these people. He gave responsibility to Peter the loud-mouth. He didn't hide from the world, he came to love it and to heal it. In order to nurse someone back to life you have to get close to the wound. Jesus came into our broken, hurting lives in order to heal us.
Jesus came to give us back our innocence. He came to take our guilt, our shame, and our skepticism. He died so that we could have new hearts that could take head to what God is whispering (and sometimes shouting) to us. He came so that I could find reasons to trust in others when I had already been let down. He came to teach me that while the world is certainly not perfect, he is. Jesus is the person that I can lean on and never ever be disappointed.
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