Age of Innocence

Remember when you thought chocolate milk came from brown cows, or that Santa was real? Ooops. Sorry to spoil that for you but all milk is white:) The point is there was a time when things were believable. When you are older and you believe something silly it is called ignorance, but when you are young it is called innocence. I think we should be able to have that measure of grace our entire lives. I have many friends who for whatever reason believed something completely ridiculous way into their adult years.
For example, I was told by my Great Uncle Francis that he lost his arm to a rabid chicken. At the age of 5, having never been exposed to a live, unfried chicken, who would question it. Especially when you are looking into the face of an old man with those large, brown eyes belonging to an old man with one arm? Wearing coveralls? He clearly was a farmer, had worked in the chicken coops, why would he make up such things? Adults don't lie. And there it is again, innocence.
Innocence thinks the best things about people, no matter what. Innocence wants to believe in and find hope in the eyes of the person in front of them. Sometimes it is there, and sometimes it is not even in the building. But innocence gives everyone an equal chance to prove or disprove them self. When we prejudge others, we may miss either a really good story, or the truth.
Now this is not to say that we do not want to have wisdom, but that does not imply judgement. It just means that, for instance, that if you were 35 when you heard the rabid chicken story you may say to yourself, a human being out weighs the average chicken 100 to 200 x's. So even if the chicken was rabid, a grown man would be able to say hit it with a stick or lock it in a coup prior to it pecking the mans arm off. Wisdom would tell you this, innocence would lead you to ponder this and ignorance, like rust, would not be able to find any interest what so ever.
So how did my great uncle lose an arm? He got it caught in an auger where he was trapped for hours before somebody realized he was not back from the field. And oh yeah, they had a hard time getting it out. I gotta be honest, as a child or an adult I think I like the chicken story a bit better.
So just like in everyday life, innocence also allows us to freely accept unconditional love. Wisdom would say unconditional love is truth while ignorance will spend eternity looking for an angle or scam. Mark 10:15