“For God maketh my heart soft.”—Job 23:16 (KJV)
My friend who lived in a big city, a somewhat intolerant man, had a seven-year-old son. Someone gave the lad a kite for his birthday. The only place to fly it was a small park near their apartment that had been allowed to deteriorate into a meeting place for social misfits. My friend always gave it a wide berth to “keep away from the riffraff,” as he put it.
But the child begged so hard that at last the father consented. “And you know,” he said to me later, “When those people saw a child with a kite, something in them was changed. They watched the kite soar up over the grimy city with a look of far-off happiness, of remembered joy. It made me realize how different they might have been if things had been easier for them. I don’t think I’ll ever be quite so scornful of them again.”
