A lesson from a little boy

Learning they say never ends.  Each day of our lives we end up learning something only if we are ready to learn. And this learning does not have to happen just from books. Who can be a better teacher than life itself? We learn from the people around us and we learn from out daily experiences. And when it comes to learning from people does it always have to be people who are elder to us or people who are at a higher position than us? Does age or status matter? A little incident that happened just few days ago made me ponder on this.
It was a bright Sunday morning and I was in Church for the Sunday mass. As I am a member of the Church choir, I sat on the first bench that’s allocated for us. During the sermon, a little boy who might have just learned to walk, came walking to the front. I have seen many little children walk during the mass and hence I did not pay much attention to him. Sometimes the kids talk and scream while roaming around in the church and everyone was happy that this boy was silent.
He walked closer to the altar. It seemed that he was either interested in the baskets that were kept there for the collection or the flowers that were kept around the altar. But what the little boy did surprised everyone. He knelt down right in front of the altar and bowed his head and kissed the altar. He then made the sign of the cross and joined his hands to pray. Then looking up at the crucifix that was hung in the church, he whispered a prayer. And I am sure that God would have definitely been pleased with him and heard answered his prayer.
That day I learned a lot from that little fellow. He was so sincere in his prayers. May be the words he spoke made no sense to him, but his heart knew what he was doing. And though I was often been told “When you pray, pray like a little child”, it made perfect sense after this incident. May be that is why Jesus told “Unless you become like a little child, you can never enter the kingdom of heaven”. I feel everyday we need to pray sincerely with faith like that of children. And yes age and status don’t matter when we have to learn something. What matter is our willingness to learn and our openness to learn from incidents such as this.