The following article was first presented as a devotional during morning worship at the General Conference office.�Editors.

Y TEXT TODAY IS 1 CORINTHIANS 13:11, and I like The Clear Word paraphrase of it: �When I was a child, I spoke as a child, because I understood and thought as a child. But when I grew up, I put my childish ways of thinking behind me.�

As a child I had high and lofty aspirations for my future career. None of that stereotypical homemaker/secretary/nurse/ teacher stuff that women gravitated to was for me. When I was somewhere around the advanced maturity of 5 or 7 years of age, my answer to the proverbial question �What are you going to be when you grow up?� was to indicate that my goal and greatest ambition in life were to become an ice-cream taster. What more glorious way could there possibly be to earn a living? Just think of spending all day, every day, eating ice cream. And, mind you, that was before anyone ever heard about Ben & Jerry�s¹ with all their wonderful mixtures, and Baskin-Robbins� 31 flavors² were unknown in my part of the world in those days. We were pretty much limited to vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, Popsicles, Nutty Buddies, and Eskimo Pies.

When I was a child it never occurred to me that you might eventually get sick and tired of eating ice cream. Or even worse, that it might not be good for your health. And as a skinny stick of a kid, whoever thought of gaining weight! I thought only of the temporary joy of cool creamy ice cream sliding down my throat. My childish mind was fixed on the short-term joys in life. I was thinking of the pleasure that was to be had for just a short moment in time. Why? Because �when I was a child, . . . I understood and thought as a child.�

The apostle Paul doesn�t say what ages limit childhood. So we have to assume he is talking about the first period of our lives. Those years before we can clearly articulate our needs, wants, and desires. Childhood�that time when our present knowledge is limited by our environment. A time before we begin to understand adult concepts. My desire to be an ice-cream taster was seriously flawed. When I was a child I thought ice-cream tasters sat around and ate ice cream all day. It was as an adult I learned that professional product tasters take small bites or sips and then rinse their mouths out. They don�t have the opportunity to savor great amounts of the food or drink they�re testing.

I�d Never Want to Work There
A few years later on a rare family vacation we stopped in Washington, D.C. My mother�s goal was to visit the General Conference headquarters. Remember 6840 Eastern Avenue in Takoma Park? I�m fairly certain Mom�s idea was not on the top of my father�s list of things to do in Washington, and my sister Charlene and I certainly didn�t share her enthusiasm to any great extent. Visit an office? After all, to most 9- and 12-year-olds, an office is an office�even the Smithsonian had to be more interesting!

But Mom won, and that visit to the General Conference headquarters at the age of 9 taught me something important. The lesson I took home was that I never wanted to work at the General Conference! All the women I saw working that day had the same disability. Interestingly enough, the men in the office didn�t seem to be affected. Later in life I was frequently reminded of the question I asked my mother that day: �Mom, do you have to be deaf to work here?� You see, to my childish eyes all the secretaries were deaf and wore hearing aids. Most of you are very young and probably never saw secretaries sitting behind desks with earphones connected to transcribers on which they listened endlessly to their bosses dictate with some letter, report, or other task to be done. To my childish mind that earpiece meant you were deaf. And I was certainly not willing to become deaf just to work at the General Conference.

�When I was a child, I spoke as a child, . . . I understood as a child.�

My understanding was incomplete. I had no working knowledge of secretarial work. I was unfamiliar with the concept of Dictaphones and transcribers. My childhood environment had not prepared me for what I was seeing. And so my childish decision was based on incomplete knowledge.

A Deeper Understanding
As a child I learned that God turned water into wine, a fish into a taxi, a sea into a dry path, and five loaves and two fishes into a banquet for thousands. As an adult I want to understand more fully how He can turn me into a person who can glorify Him.

Now, no longer a child, I seek to understand concepts that reach beyond childish understanding. I seek to understand that life�s mistakes can also be God�s blessings, and I must learn to take advantage of them.

I know and understand that physical strength comes from daily walks and exercise, but true strength comes from daily talks with God. I seek greater understanding in those daily talks, an understanding that helps me to walk firmly and confidently, knowing that God will catch me when I fall in my spiritual walk.

I desire a deeper understanding of how a Man who spent His life teaching others to live peacefully and to be kind one to another could be hung on a cross, and what the sacrifice of His life means for me.

Just before his death Sir Isaac Newton said: �I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I . . . have been . . . like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself . . . finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell . . . whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.�³

What truths have you found in that great ocean? I invite you to set aside the childhood pebbles and shells and seek an adult understanding of those everlasting truths that are waiting your discovery.

Father in heaven, we ask You this morning to give us greater understanding of the sacrifice Your Son made for us. Help us to use the talents You have so generously given us to discover, in the great ocean of truth, Your wisdom and Your will for our lives. And now as we go to our offices and take up our tasks, enable each of us to reflect Your character during this day. In Jesus� name, amen.

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¹ Ben & Jerry�s is a well-known ice-cream manufacturing company located in the United States.
² Baskin-Robbins ice cream is marketed internationally.
³ David Brewster, The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (New York: Harper & Bros., 1842), pp. 300, 301.

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Linda de Leon is an assistant treasurer of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Silver Spring, Maryland.