Is a childlike "playful spirit" a good thing?

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When we see children playing happily (with toys, on rides or playground equipment, with their imagination or just having fun with each other), it can make even the most hardened person smile.

It seems as though this “playful” spirit is a good thing that even adults should in some ways imitate in order to comply to Jesus’ command to be like a child.

Yet, I am having trouble finding anything in scripture that expounds this quality as something good and holy.

Does anyone know of any passages that support the childlike playful spirit? Any stories of saints with this childlike “playful” spirit?
 
Pax Christi!

St. John Bosco combined acrobatics and juggling with catechism lessons as recruiting tools.

God bless.
 
There is a reference that is speaking of Jesus that comes to mind when God formed creation. I remember the phrase from some scripture translation to the effect,

“I was with Him…playing all the day.”

It’s in Proverbs 8:

***I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times; *** Douay-Rheims

***The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.
23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth;
26 before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.
RSV CE
 
I don’t know how many times I have read the book of Proverbs, yet I don’t remember seeing that passage. It’s beautiful!

Thank you, Jamal, for sharing that.
 
Glad I could be of some small service.

Christ’s blessings.
 
Beautiful indeed - I gather from this that this is the Son delighting in his Father’s creation, much like a son would playfully delight in his father’s train set, or Lego set, etc - helping to build it and make it “go”…

Something worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting, perhaps to capture the spirit of the son working with the father on something not necessary, but wonderfully creative.

Disneyland comes to mind and how I feel when I share it with my children - though it is all pretend (and they know this). But in the case of our Heavenly Father and His Son - it is all very real and very wonderful (or at least was, much of it still is, and one day will be all wonderful again).
 
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