“Kids are hard on houses,” my husband is fond of casually observing. Mind you, he never says it in anger; it’s more of a statement of fact, an observation of a universal truth, a resigned nod in reply to the crayon and pen marks on the walls and floors, scratches from toy trains and cars on the coffee table, the awkward sagging of couches and armchairs that have too often been mistaken for a trampoline, and the occasional apple that someone took a bite from and then dutifully replaced in the fruit bowl.
To be clear, our kids aren’t spoiled. We do our best to teach them to be good stewards—of our home, of the neighborhood, of our church and this world. They do chores around the house and in the yard, they usually make their beds in the morning, and they generally pitch in and help, sometimes even unasked, although more often a prompting is helpful. They are thoughtful, obedient kids.
But all kids are also kids—meaning, sometimes they are prone to do something that someone with a fully developed frontal lobe might consider dangerous, reckless, or plain stupid—or at least rather annoying and inconsiderate. Like that time my daughter, then three years old, scaled up to the top of my husband’s car (when he snapped a picture with his phone before getting her down, the phone was convinced this was a bird). Or another time, when she climbed to the top of a tree and got stuck, not knowing how to get back down. Or that other time she did it again. And again. At least eventually she learned how to climb down.
We talk about kids as “good” or not, but perhaps to speak of a good boy is only appropriate when referring to dogs. Kids are good in a theological sense, always. Sometimes, however, their behavior is not what adults would call good. Yet at least on occasion this assessment says more about the adults’ expectations than it does about the child.
I have had occasion to think more about this recently not because of anything crazier than usual that my kids have done. Rather, we have been making our way through the complete works of Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren. She is perhaps best known for her much beloved books about Pippi Longstocking, the super-strong and independent little girl who can pick up cows and horses as casually as someone else might a kitten, or her books about Karlsson-on-the-Roof, the little boy who lives in his own little house on the roof of an ordinary Stockholm apartment building. Oh, and he can fly. But Lindgren’s creation that I really want to talk about here is the little boy Emil, who hails from the Lönneberga parish of Småland, Sweden.
Emil is a preschooler who lives on a farm with his parents, younger sister, Ida, and the farm employees, Alfred and Lina. The stories are structured around Emil’s escapades, each story narrating one particular day in this little boy’s life. On such-and-such an ordinary day, here’s what Emil did to land him in trouble. Like that time, on holiday, when he hoisted little Ida up on the flagpole instead of the flag, attaching her to the hooks by her dress sash. Or the day he painted her face blue while pretending to be a doctor, right before a large company of people from the family’s church arrived for a coffee party. And then there was that time he caught a bunch of crayfish and set them loose in his parents’ bedroom. Or that time he put a soup tureen on his head to be able to lick the rest of the soup (it was that good!), but then his head got stuck inside.
The village is a proverbial fishbowl, so everyone knows that Emil is a bit of a handful. At one point, the narrator gravely reflects, things seemed so bad that the villagers all took up a collection and formally presented it to Emil’s mother: here’s some money so she could buy a ticket to send Emil to America (the place, apparently, where mid-century Swedes imagined sending off ill-behaved village children). In case you’re wondering, Emil’s mother was deeply offended.
But while Emil does seem to accumulate infractions faster than the average kid, perhaps what is most striking about him is that he is a remarkably thoughtful boy. This is on display in the most dramatic of all the stories about Emil. When Alfred, the farmhand, got blood poisoning from an injury in the middle of winter, it was clear to all that he needed to get to a doctor in the city. Except a snowstorm was afoot, and it was not safe to travel. Emil finally realizes that Alfred would die unless he gets him to a doctor right then, so he sneaks out of the house at dawn, hitches a horse to a sledge, manages to strap Alfred into it, and sets off on the hazardous roads, the only one brave enough to do this. And he saves Alfred’s life, as everyone admits later on.
Yet it should not surprise us that Emil saved Alfred so dramatically. After all, the same inventiveness that has been on display in all of Emil’s mischiefs is the key to his ability to help his friend. It took creativity for a small boy to figure out how to load a fully grown man into a sledge, for example. More than that, I’ve spent plenty of time around six-year-olds, and I can assure you that the vast majority would not have thought it their responsibility to get a dying man to a doctor in the middle of a snowstorm. But Emil did.
During Jesus’s ministry, his disciples were appalled when people brought children to him and tried to turn them away. But Jesus, to their surprise and embarrassment, insisted on letting the children come. Welcoming them meant a certain acceptance of their noise, likely runny noses, squirminess, and perhaps some crying because of missed naps or overstimulation in a large, crowded space. Children are good, but children are unpredictable. How might Jesus have responded to a child like Emil? Perhaps, at the most obvious level, he would not have proposed sending him away from the village, like a problem to make disappear.
But there is one other relevant detail that the narrator occasionally brings up as an aside: Emil grows up to become the village mayor. It is with this long-term outcome in mind that the narrator would like us to consider Emil’s outrageous escapades. Imagine little Emil and the grown-up Emil. Can you reconcile the two of them as the same person? Maybe not. The narrator himself is repentantly incredulous. But that is the point. God alone looks at the heart.
Yes, kids really are rough on houses—and on their parents and siblings sometimes too. But we hope to instill in them a love for God and a love for others around them that will bear fruit in ways we can’t yet imagine. And once they’re all grown, maybe we’ll replace that long-suffering couch.
Image via Wikimedia
