Children are nearer heaven than we are

Fresh from the land of the angels, the child is angelic at birth. It is godlike. The soul enters the body of a child and it sleeps its childhood. The reason sleeps. The conscience sleeps. The child exists. It has not yet begun to live a reasoned, responsible life. The child is innocent, for it knows no guile. It is pure, for it has come not across impurity. It is angelic; for it has faced not the demon lurking within it. The flower of life has not yet budded and blossomed. Innocent, pure and angelic is childhood. To see children is to see the Yazatas and Amesha Spentas, the Angels and Archangels of Ahura Mazda.

Nature abounds in many a charming object, but none so sweet as a child. Children fill our eyes with light and our hearts with delight. They gladden and they brighten our homes with their bright faces and happy smiles and sweet prattlings. They amuse us and cheer us and enliven us. Incomparable is the joy to fondle them and love them and play with them. Children in their budding tender life, are the poetry and song of human life.

Childhood has no past. The present and the future are the two seasons of children. They dream not of the future. The present is all their life. No care, no anxiety, no fear have they. Life to them is joy and sunshine, frolic and fun.

Childhood is the season of planting seeds that will blossom into rich harvest. As the farmer anxiously awaits the nature of the season's crops, so do fond parents look year after year how the child-mind develops and the child-soul unfolds. The child is the man and the children are the nation of the morrow. One day will the nation be as children grown up to maturity, will make it.

As the rose bud unfolds its petals to the beams of the rising sun, so does blooming youth outgrow its childhood and with wide awake reason and conscience assumes the responsibilities of life.

Now begins the journey on the rough and rugged path of life of hope and despair, joy and sorrow, success and failure, honor and shame, happiness or misery. Blank was the tablet of the soul in childhood. Youth now begins to record its daily doings and creates its history. Childhood was unsoiled by the vulgarities of the world. Youth now lives and works in the midst of temptation and vice. The light of reason brightens the paths of his life and the inner, infallible, divine voice guides him. The child was the angel by birth. Man or woman has to live the angelic life and fighting evil and living for good, has to become angel on his or her own merit.

The child is every parent's hope. All long to live in their children. Give us children of sound minds in sound bodies, who may grow up to be men and women of brilliant career and pure character, diligent and honest, upright and true, wise and virtuous, patriotic and selfless, and live and work for thee and thine, Ahura Mazda.

This page was last updated on Tuesday, August 01, 2000.