Living Joyfully

The image of those three boys has just lingered in my mind like the smell of biscuits coming out of the oven, or the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.  More than anything else the sight of those boys sent my mind back to a time long ago when I was one of them.  I watched them while waiting for the young woman to sell her strawberries to the couple who had arrived ahead of me.  They raced through a field of knee deep weeds, grabbed hold of low tree limbs for a swing, and then sped across the rock gravel driveway on their way to the chicken yard.  All this they did and barefoot, too.    

Who among us remembers running wildly with abandonment without any shoes?  I am not sure my soles were ever as tough as the bottoms of those six feet running over gravel rock!  Back when I was seven or eight as they seem to be going barefoot was a treat!  I grew up wearing shoes, but I had cousins who got to play without them.  I looked forward to going to their house and becoming one of them.    

Perhaps, their image lingers because it calls me to play, to run, to be carefree, to experience and enjoy whatever the moment brings.  Being an adult with its insistence on acting proper can sometimes be a pain.  There is so much being missed because of our fear of casting aside what is ingrained within us from a life of living.  While our Creator certainly put us here to live responsibly, He surely intended for us to live with great joy within the Creation He has created all around us.  Maybe this is it.  These boys were like a message from God telling me to live joyfully!  Perhaps, I should give it a try.  Maybe, you should, too.