Even hoity toity angels have hope

There’s nothing like a school nativity play to get you in the mood for what this season is all about.

Last week I went to Eastfield Primary school near Cumbernauld to see The Hoity Toity Angel. The little girl who played the angel really did have an attitude as she stamped her foot and said: “Bother! Bother! Bother!” when asked to go and see a little baby in a manger surrounded by shepherds and smelly sheep.

Each of the little boys and girls in primary one, two and three eagerly searched the audience for the faces of their mums and dads, grannys and grandpas. They waved and gave big grins when they saw their special person.

My six-year-old grandson Jack, a shepherd, grinned with delight when he saw us. And as I watched the play unfold I couldn’t help wondering what the future held for each of the children?

Who would grow up to be a nurse, a banker, electrician, train driver, footballer or teacher? What would the future hold? Would they marry and have families of their own? Would life treat them kindly or cruelly?

The homeless men and woman sleeping rough on our streets were once as fresh-faced as these children. So too the men and women in our overcrowded jails. At what point do we take the actions which determine our future? And what can parents do to help their sons and daughters take the right path in life?

Philosophers and psychologists have pondered these questions for years. There are no definitive answers but we all know what matters most love.

If a child knows he is loved, wanted and respected at home by his family, he has the best foundation for starting school, learning things, making friends, and growing into the person he was always destined to be.

He may face all sorts of challenges along the way but the building blocks for happiness are laid in those crucial early years.

It’s an awesome responsibility, becoming a parent. We’re not trained for it and, more often than not, all we have to rely on is our instinct. But somehow or other, although we make mistakes along the way, we manage to raise our children to be kind, to share, to know right from wrong and to be prepared for the new world of school.

Teachers share the task of educating and preparing them for the next stage of their lives. Good teachers have a huge impact.

I learned to love books and writing because of a teacher who felt passionate about words I learned to hate numbers because of one who lost her patience with my slowness.

Last week as I watched the nativity play a bunch of gunmen were shooting, killing and maiming more than a hundred children and their teachers in Pakistan. Where does that senseless hatred begin? What happens to a man to make him want to murder schoolchildren?

There are no answers. But despite the ugly violence of our world one thing remains and it’s hope.

Every child who comes into the world brings hope. The hope that being raised with love and educated with care every boy or girl will grow up to become everything he or she is capable of being.

Even the Hoity Toity Angel recognised in time that the baby in the grubby stable was born to change our world for the better.