We have all been a little one, a child, and we stumble, but we can grow from the stumbles, and we can learn new truth and find new hope.

I’ve heard many stories of abuse, but some of the worst are when subtle little lies have, with organized precision, been sewn into a child’s life. It’s evil.

Knowing the vulnerability of a child’s mind to learning and absorbing new information and behaviors, someone has, with malicious intent, corrupted a mind made in the image of God. Those lies take root and grow into deformed thinking and behaviors far from God’s intended delight.

I’ve seen adults with low IQ, intellectually challenged and disabled, being taken advantage of because of their child-like naivety. It was repugnant and evil. I called the Police, but nothing could be done.

Then there is another kind of abuse—the one where the child receives messages from another hurting human. Hurt people hurt people. The child hears the messages – verbal and non-verbal and believes them as truth.

Words that couldn’t be taken back and words that dug deep into the soul of that little child.

A thinking track is laid down in the child’s mind. A small little tiny microscopic pathway, and then the next day, another abuse is added to the brain.

This neurological pathway in the brain is gaining strength. That soft, malleable brain takes its cues from the environment around it and shapes its pathways according to what it’s been told.

Stumbling blocks and Millstones

When the followers of Jesus wanted to know who was the greatest, the one who got the pride of place position at the table, Jesus turned their earthly kingdom thoughts of achievement upside down. He still does.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks!

Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes! Matthew 18:1-7

Everyone one of us has taken a stumble. Jesus said they ‘are bound to come.’

My little two-year-old granddaughter took a nasty fall the other day and hurt her head. She was playing on a small plastic slide and fell from the top of the slide onto the floor.

She was crying, and her parents comforted her. After a little while, she got back up and quietly got back into life.

I wonder what she learned? Maybe that this world is not as safe as she once thought it was.

My daughter and her husband didn’t maliciously set up the slide with the intent of her falling. It was an accident, but they felt bad for what had happened. They could have prevented it by not having a slide, not allowing her to try new things.

Wrapping people in cotton wool chokes out the discovery of life.

That delightful two old will have many other stumbles in her life, but woe to anyone who sets out to cause her to stumble.

Where has the little one stumbled

I think we all have stumbled and fallen. Something has tripped us up. Hopefully not with malicious intent, but we have all tripped up in our thinking somewhere along the line.

We heard one thing and interpreted it possibly in a manner that it wasn’t intended to be understood, especially by God.  We have interpreted the experience in the most obvious childlike way.

Children are excellent recorders of their experiences but poor interpreters. David Riddell

Some time ago, I watched a teacher berate a child within their care. It was, to be blunt, a shaming exercise and spoke more about the angry world within the