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When Greta Thunberg took a test sail for a few hours earlier this week she reported feeling seasick for just a couple of minutes. Four days into her voyage of 3,500 nautical miles to a UN climate change summit, I hope the Atlantic is being kind to the young environmental activist.

Any discomfort she’s faced since becoming an unlikely international celebrity might seem as little through the nausea of swelling waves on a tiny yacht battered by a force ten gale. Can it really be worth this?

It can be easy to dismiss the idealism of young people who say they want to change the world. The issues seem so clear. Grand pronouncements are easy. Marches, demonstrations, many forms of public protest can be empowering, as well as fun.

Not, I suspect, when you’re feeling seasick. Which is why Greta’s determination at 16 to keep on doing whatever she can to change minds continues to fire imaginations around the world.

Just as Malala Yousafzai has done, even more dramatically. In the now familiar story, she’d been campaigning for the right of women and children to be educated in her native Swat valley in Pakistan when a Taliban gunman tried to assassinate her. She was shot in the head and critically wounded, but she’s made a fine recovery and is now studying in Oxford. She was 17, when she became the youngest ever Nobel peace prize winner.

The example of such young people is both humbling and challenging - as it can be far away from any media attention when we hear of the children who forego many activities their school friends take for granted because they care for a sick parent who can’t look after themselves.

When Jesus was asked about greatness, he said, ‘I assure you, unless you change and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ That’s about vulnerability, for sure, recognising a need, being willing to trust. But it can also be about the innocence which lives in hope of a brighter future, and a single-minded determination to see it happen.

Farmer’s daughter Mary Jones was arguably one of the most influential people Wales has produced. More than 200 years ago she decided at the age of nine that she must have a Bible of her own, in her own language. Saving for it took her six years. She then walked 25 miles through the mountains of Snowdonia to the town of Bala to buy it. Her story and her dedication so impressed a number of key church leaders, that they formed a national Bible society which by today works in more than 200 countries.

Pay attention to those you might be tempted to dismiss, Jesus said, and learn from them.

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