I is for INFANT

I don't remember being an infant, which is probably hardly surprising as it tends to cover that period of my life roughly before Ii was one year old and certainly before I could walk or talk. The word itself appears to be a derivative of an old Latin word 'in-fans' which, in translation, meant being unable to speak though infants tend to make up for that inadequacy in other ways as wife and I found out with our own. We often talk about the infant classrooms in school but it's pretty obvious that this is a misnomer, for the young four or five year olds who form the first year of primary school, since they already can walk and run and tumble and often speak as if they need to tell you all the words they know in one sentence.

IN retrospect, though not from actual memory, infancy must be one of the best times of one's life and also one of the most satisfying and contented periods. In that first year or eighteen months, there is no desire to be at another stage of life as the young mind grapples with the simplicities of feeding,sleeping and bowel emptying. Indeed there is little else to occupy their minds apart from the stationary mobile, which is in itself a contradiction in terms, hanging above their pram or cot and a few plastic or soft toys that make a variety of clangs, whistles and creaks, supposedly to stimulate the young mind to investigate or at the very least smile. But, and again this is not from personal knowledge, there doesn't appear to be any great desire to return to an earlier stage of life, i.e. back inside the warmth of another human being, nor is there any hurry to explore the great big world that awaits. And despite the colic or hunger induced cries, there is a strong element of contentment with no wish to be five, ten, twenty or fifty years older. I guess when your mind is still coming to terms with daylight and colour, there is enough going on inside your head without having to think about the future. And isn't that probably the only period in our lives when we don't actually worry, though I reckon we do have the occasional thought about when or from where our next meal is coming. But as parents, aren't we so eager to rush our infants beyond this extraordinary stage of life, impatiently waiting for the first recognisable word, dangling their little legs above the carpet in the hope that they will try to take that first step, wanting them to enjoy Christmas and Santa Clause before they even know Jesus exists and taking them to the beach when they still see sand as a possible food.


Once they become mobile, they stop becoming an infant and the toddler stage commences with a whole world their oyster to explore, yet that could happen in just a few days and the toddler is hardly much wiser than the infant they were last week. Now, away from the constant safety of a mother or father, the confines of a pram, cot or playpen, danger lurks at every corner, new thoughts and ideas begin to formulate and with it the first signs of worry and very soon, the world will never be the same again. I think it's about this stage that most of us begin to feel longing in our lives, maybe for being another age, being somewhere else, often longing for something we see and rarely does that feeling ever go away again. When I was an infant I don't recall longing for anything for all I needed was provided but within a few short years, I was longing to ride a tricycle, then a bike, then drive the tractor and eventually the car. But our longings come in all different forms. Often it is the longing for a new car, a expensive piece of jewellery, a different house, a job, a girlfriend, boyfriend, husband or wife, a skill we don't possess, an appliance that everybody else seems to have, a holiday or more money. And very often it is a longing to be at another stage of life, wishing that we were older, left school or university, earning in a job, having a family, or even retired. As I get older, sometimes I long for earlier times in my life again, when I was young enough to play sport competitively or play music that everyone listened to, to be without the responsibilities that come with increasing age and family life and very occasionally, just to be a child again.


Right now though, I long for only one thing and that is for God to use me in His service. It's strange, having travelled so far and been blessed so much in my human experience that the longing to please Him is now stronger than it has ever been. And when HE answers my prayer, as I know He will, I know I will once again be in that place of complete contentment, like an infant whose mother and father cars for every part of their life.Paul makes several reference to this state of contentment in his writings telling Timothy that 'Godliness with contentment is great gain,' but also revealing to the Philippian church that 'I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want' and finally warning in his letter to the Hebrews 'Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."' As I travel the road where longing has become part of everyday life and where satisfaction is a word often confined to the past, I urge you to rediscover the contentment that is found in Him and come as a little child to His feet.