Friday, March 6, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Innocent
God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son;
so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.
Today Miles, Jasper and I will give TopGolf a try. We have Christmas gift cards! We’ll get there for “unlimited golf” until noon and maybe have some “donut holes-in-one” or macaroni bites or pizza while we play. If you push the right magic button, you can hit your ball toward the virtual rickety Angry Birds shack and knock it down. And then scream in victory.
Without those guys, I would have trouble maintaining what innocence I still have. They believe. I am not so sure. I won’t hold my breath. There be dragons everywhere. (Actually we’re all looking forward to The Dinosaurs on Netflix, an animated documentary that starts today. Stephen Spielberg has not yet let me down. We’ve seen the IMAX T-Rex movie three times now at our state museum, and I think this will be awesome too.)
But I’m thinking about innocence, and giving writing about it a shot at 11:30 pm on Thursday night, because of something Henri Nouwen wrote …
I know that every time I choose for my innocence, I don’t have to worry about the next ten years. I can simply be where I am, listening, seeing, touching in the very moment, always sure that I am not alone but with him who called me to live as God’s child…. My innocence is hidden in God. As a child who belongs to God, I can claim my innocence without leaving the world. In fact, as an innocent one, I am sent into the world: “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18)
Nouwen wrote that in Finding Our Sacred Center in 1990. Of course he remembered Paul’s precious poetic assertion to the Colossians. He wouldn’t die quite yet; it would be six years more. But he knew, just like we can too when we recognize our own innocence, that he was hidden with Christ in God.
The editors of the daily Nouwen post included a question for reflection: “What fears arise when I hear that I am sent into the world as an innocent one … and what freedom might also be opening there?”
Fears and freedom. Both-and. When Jesus insists that my fears are entirely unnecessary within the family of God, he also says it over and over again. DO NOT BE AFRAID. I will claim not only his promise, but also God’s forgiveness for my incredible inability to remember it.
Isn’t my sense of innocence contingent on the trust God wants me to have of him? Why would I need to ask the question Joshua asked: “Are you for us or against us?”
God’s answer is clear. Neither. And the rest of the answer is always the same, whether for Joshua or David or Constantine or Napoleon or President Trump: “My child, ask a different question. Are you on God’s side?”
The next day our Dutch pastor-friend Henri wrote about home, not the physical conditional place but … HOME (where perhaps we can recognize/reclaim/regain our innocence):
When Jesus says, “Make your home in me as I make mine in you,” he offers us an intimate place that we can truly call “home.” Home is that place or space where we do not have to be afraid but can let go of our defenses and be free, free from worries, free from tensions, free from pressures. Home is where we can laugh and cry, embrace and dance, sleep long and dream quietly, eat, read, play, watch the fire, listen to music, and be with a friend. Home is where we can rest and be healed.
(Genesis 37, Psalm 105, John 3, Matthew 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
