Editorial August 7, 1976 Issue

To Heal Childhood's Scars

Naomi Price

There is no need for anyone to carry through life a penalty for some sad happening that occurred before birth or in his early mortal experience. Yet there are many who cherish childhood's scars and blame them for their shortcomings and failures of later years.

These scars are not usually the consequence of the skinned knees and cut fingers of clumsiness and impetuosity. Occasionally, perhaps, they are reminders of a fall from the cradle or some other unpropitious happening, but more often they are mental: memoranda of disappointments and grievances, of upheavals of discordant family life, of the deprivations of poverty. Sad circumstances such as these, sometimes apparently real but quite frequently imagined, are too commonly perpetuated to an advanced age as reasons for irregularities of temperament, lack of accomplishment, and ill health. But they need not be. And they will not be by one who has some understanding of God's law of perpetually renewed love and care for all His offspring.

"Behold, I make all things new"^{Rev. 21:5;} was an important part of the vision of spiritual truth that came to John on the Isle of Patmos. The Apostle Paul voiced the same thought when he said in an epistle, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."^{II Cor. 5:17;} Eventually we will all be called upon to turn our backs on past human experiences and accept the doctrine of renewal that Christianity presents.