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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
God Loves Children
 1 Samuel 3:1-10; Mark 10:13-16
It's a sweet picture, and one of the all-time favorites among our Sanctuary's ten stained glass windows depicting Jesus and his meaning.
He's sitting with some children, each of them obviously happy to be close to him and to have his undivided attention. In the background we see some grown-ups bringing more children to join the joyful scene.
I have in my office another picture that represents this brief story in Mark's Gospel. Its mood is much darker than our stained glass version, and understandably so.
Drawn by a 10-year-old Sunday school boy, it's a kid's-eye view of how the story begins. A 10-year-old boy stands facing us, visible from head to toe. On his right we see the feet and legs of two adults, the rest of their bodies disappearing above the picture. To his left an arm reaches into the picture to push the boy back and away.
Now we realize that we are standing in Jesus' sandals, and the boy is looking us in the eye to ask, "What will you do now?"
Our young artist has supplied his own answer as an inscription: "I'm a kid. All kids are important to Jesus. I am too."
What a shame the disciples didn't think of that when they tried to shoo away the children that busy day so long ago.
I can see why they were distracted and forgot their manners. Here was Jesus putting in one more long hard day of teaching and preaching and healing and all. Who had time for any kind of interruption?
Besides that, he'd been telling and retelling the hard bad news that when they got to Jerusalem for the Passover he would be captured and killed! Who had mental or emotional space for anything else, with all that weighing heavy on their hearts?
Well, Jesus is who.
He invited the children to come sit with him. He held them, smiled at them, spoke to them, probably laughed and winked and mussed their hair a bit. And he blessed them in God's good name.
And he said to his disciples (and to us), "Never underestimate how important a single child is in the heart and mind of God. In fact it's absolutely essential for every person -- no matter how long in years and wise in worldly ways -- to have the attitude of a child when it comes to knowing and trusting God."
Psychology tells us there's a child inside every one of us all the days of our lives, who will not tolerate being forgotten or ignored for very long. By ourselves, or by other selves with whom we live and move and have our being.
I discovered several years ago that inside my psyche there live at least three such kids: one age three, another age seven, and a very edgy sixteen-year-old. It took me a long time to get to know these kids, an even longer time to come to terms with them. All these years later, I'm still working on how best to team up with them occasionally, to have some fun for one thing, and also to become the mature man that God has in mind whenever my name is mentioned around heaven.
Meanwhile, words fail me to fathom this amazingly wonderful fact: Every kid is infinitely important to Jesus, especially the kids who live inside you and me!
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posted by Jack Buckley at
3:19 PM
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