Purity Of Mind

This morning as I was walking through the rose garden, checking on how each bush is doing, looking for buds and delightful to find some, I was thinking about how pure these flowers will look and how sweet the buds are.  Their appearance full of hope for what is to come.
Not sure how the train of thought went, but seeing them, gave way to thinking about purity and how we are surrounded by words and deeds that seek to rob that aspect of our lives.   Someone recently mentioned to my husband that they watch what they say around him because he doesn't even use slang.  He does not swear or make off color remarks at all.    Innuendos fall on deaf ears for him.   This is not by accident, he makes an effort to keep his mind centered on those things which are good, uplifting.    I remember being a young teen and saying something in all innocence in a conversation with my parents, and years later a joke being made about how everyone had to stifle their chuckle.    I was naive.   Just this last week, someone made a comment about some innuendo that I was totally in the dark about and preferred to leave it that way.  I watch the small children now coming out of Kindergarten and hear parents talking about this little boy or this little girl having a "crush" on some other little child, or hear stories from people I know about their little 7 year old having a boyfriend or girlfriend.   What are we doing to these wee ones, stealing their innocent play and turning it into romance, putting words and phrases into their vocabulary that they are far too young to be using, and then wondering how in the world the youth of today are sexually active so young.  Do we contribute by our own words and jokes in some way ?   Innocence is beautiful, pure thoughts, void of violence, deviant behaviors, lets our hearts fill with goodness.   Never once did I see the "plain" community that we worshiped with, as being too naive or not worldly enough.  Instead, I wished for a mind that was more pure, less on the lookout for something to snicker about.  Less knowledgeable about the darker side of mankind's behavior.  

“Because of something she heard in school, Corrie asked her father what "sex sin" was while the two of them were riding on a train together. The father asked the little girl to carry his bag off the train. When she admitted that she could not do so, he said he would not be much of a father to expect this of her. The load was too heavy. This was the case, he said, with some knowledge. She needed to trust her father to give her knowledge at the right time.”

― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

We would do well to have this sort of mentality, prepare our children as they are ready to carry the load of that knowledge, and not before.  Our children are buds, unfolding, preparing to bloom into maturity only when ready.  Yes, we do live in a world where information is being fired at us so rapidly, but we can weed out what is not useful, what is not for our good to carry with us. 

The television shows I all too often find myself watching, involve mysteries needing to be solved, crimes committed, and snide remarks that I would be better off not carrying in my mind.