Throughout the Gospel, we are painted a picture of a man who – among other things – had time for children. When he was asked about faith, he took a little child and used him as an example: you need to have faith like a child. When he saw a mother weeping over her dead child, he performed a miracle. When the disciples did not let the children bother their teacher, he disagreed. When stating quite simply that the learned had often missed the point, he expressed thanks that little children had not.

This is the path that Jesus followed. It is clearly rooted in the cries that God hears in the Old Testament, for the poor and the orphan and the oppressed, or those who are less able to help themselves, currently and seemingly “useless” in any society driven by productivity or getting use out of others. Children are always seemingly “useless” – and too often orphaned, abandoned in some way, or oppressed.

As far as I can tell, anyone whose way of life is, or should be, contemplative to the point of seeing Jesus in their neighbours, must adopt God’s and Jesus’ attitude to children.

If someone told you he was a deep lover of nature and a contemplative in that regard, but also admitted that he had no time for the “useless” aspects like flowers or rolling hills, would you believe him?

All the more so if someone were to claim to love God and see his presence in, beside, and behind the people he meets, but admit to having and making no time for children!  This is utter nonsense. Children are as “useless” as human beings in right health get. Yet they are precisely a point to encounter God in his children; they are less caught up in the affairs of the world, they know how to laugh and smile, they ask astute questions, and ultimately, we must all have faith as they can. It is in children that we meet God in extraordinary ways, and every opportunity that they enter our lives is something worth contemplating in light of the Gospel. If we always passed children by when presented with the opportunity to make their acquaintance or play with the ones we know, would we really be contemplatives?