Children - Unrestrained Natural Desire

I have spent more time with young children in the last few days than over the last 20 years combined.  Children are the essence of what it is to be human.  There is no filter between their basic needs and desires, and their decisions and actions.  We call those filters patience, maturity, discipline, and restraint, and while they are all good characteristics to develop as we grow, they can hide us from ourselves.  Some people get to the point where they have built up so many of those walls, of what others think they should be doing, that they can no longer every recognize or identify what they themselves want or desire anymore.

Children do not have this problem.  If they want something, they are quick to let everyone know, and if they don't get what they want, the reaction can be quite strong.  Patience is not a virtue associated with young children.  "You look busy, I'll wait," is not something you are going to hear from a toddler anytime soon.  And crying is such a frequent response that it is nearly meaningless.

The strange thing is: that is the way God created people to be.  That is not to say that we wants us to act that way all of the time, but that is our natural state.  Before we are taught anything for or against it, selfishness is clearly present within us.  Our needs and desires are there whether we suppress them or not, and many of them exist for our own protection (hunger, thirst, tiredness, etc.).  Our sinful nature can twist them by combining them with greed, but in their basic state, they can be useful.

If a parent gives a child everything they want as soon as they express a desire for it, the child becomes spoiled rotten, and doesn't mature.  I believe most people are aware of that premise, even if they don't recognize that pattern within themselves.  But when God doesn't give us, his children, the things that we want on our schedule, we don't usually see things that way.  Our usual reaction is not unlike a child, since we are all like children to some degree on the inside.

That child-like faucet of our character stands opposed to maturity and discipline, which try to quench it.  But it is those underlying desires which make us human beings instead of turning into robots, by the degree of control we try to exert over ourselves, over both our desires and our actions. 

Isolating ourselves from children allows us a greater level of control over our own lives, but spending time with them allows us to recognize those types of simple desires within ourselves, suppressed for so long.  There is a place for those basic desires, God didn't give them to us without reason.  We just can't let them, or anything else besides Him, to totally rule our lives.  That is where the patience and restraint are needed, to bring balance, which are things that God gives us as well.