To think better of it…

We were eating in a restaurant recently and I could overhear the conversation from the table behind me. A mother and her little girl—I’d guess she was around six—were talking about various things and I noticed that the mom was not one of those people who talk down to children. No baby talk, no cutesy voices, no talking slowly while EMPHASIZING certain words. Instead, they conversed like two grownups. That’s why it was so charming when the little girl was talking about a movie they’d seen and managed to say something no adult would. She expressed her opinion of the film and then said, “But people who aren’t very thinkable probably wouldn’t get that part.”
I immediately filed her word away in my memory: thinkable. We talk about unthinkable events, but never about thinkable ones. We understand what “thoughtful” means, but I vote we all add “thinkable” to our vocabulary. Don’t you know people who never seem to think before they act? Don’t you know someone who never thinks of anyone except himself? Don’t you know a person who spends amazing amounts of time thinking about meaningless trivia? Sure you do. You know me, don’t you?
Most of the time, I guess I’m not very “thinkable.” I fill my head with the mental equivalent of a forty-seven pound Hershey bar and then I wonder why there doesn’t seem to be much room in there for something meatier. And then I trip over verses like this one in Philippians 4: “Whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, things which are just, things which are pure, things which are lovely, things of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
I love it when I can learn something from a child. No wonder Jesus liked ‘em so much and wanted them close to him. They’re thinkable. I want to be that way, too, and I think it’s still possible. I may be older now … but I’m still learnable.