Children can often be cruel to another child who is different, and sometimes they can be wonderful too. A teacher told about having a girl in her class who had special needs. One day she overheard some of the boys telling that girl that there was gold in a puddle of mud at the side of the road. She immediately ran over to it and began splashing in it, looking for the gold. The group of boys thought it was a great joke, until another boy from that class – one they all admired – quietly went over and started playing in the mud too. No one laughed at her anymore.
It reminds me of something Jesus said about how our attitude to people who get laughed at or looked down on actually reflects our attitude to God: ‘What you do to the least of these,’ he said, ‘is what you are doing to me.’