Innocence...?

Despite what Google might say, this is not what innocence looks like (even though pictures of unicorns do tend to make me feel at peace).

Here is what Oxford has to say about innocence: the lack of corruption, purity.

I walked by Scarecrow Video (a huge video store) this afternoon and saw a movie poster that said something on it about innocence. It showed a little girl in a spring dress holding her hands behind her, the little girl obviously symbolizing the innocence that once was and could never again be.

I recently received an email from a friend and in it they talked about a time years ago when they were still innocent. I told them that I believed innocence was something that didn’t have to be lost, a memory growing forever further away with each waking day.

I spoke to myself when I wrote those words. I often long to go back too innocent. To be a boy who looked at the world with eyes wide open in wonder. This morning, while sitting in the backseat of my friends Bug, I watched a group of children walk by and
one of the children, a girl, looked at me with a look only someone who hasn’t lived through years of fear or hurt could give. I wanted to cry in the backseat of that little blue Bug.

Lately I have noticed a deepening desire to go back too the innocence I once knew. Not to go back to some place in time, not back to an ideal, but back to an innocence that brought complete trust in the One who formed me long. An innocence that brings me back to God.