Little Kids

I love children. I really do. The people who say they hates kids, or who say they never want to have any make absolutely no sense to me. "People who say that probably have never been around any awesome kids" says a good friend of mine, Erik (He's got a blog), and while that may be true, even in the worst of times, sometimes you can just look at a kid and see so much going on at once, it's overwhelmingly powerful. There's something about their innocence, their sense of adventure, their energy, and their love that makes us as adults envy them and, in a way, want to be more like them. In fact, Jesus himself says in Matthew 18:4 "Anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." (NLT). He tells us we need to go back to 'square one' as the Message bible says. We can learn a lot from kids.

One thing I've been seeing lately is how, really, adults and kids work together for something. I know as a little kid, my father would be working out in his workshop, building some new piece of carpentry or fixing something that was broken, or working on something that needed working on. I remember, as a little kid - maybe close to five or six years old - standing there, and asking 'Can I help?' He's hand me the hammer, and he'd guide me in driving a nail into a piece of wood, or screwing a screw back into something, or telling me how to sand down a board while I held the sandpaper in my hand.

Actually, what reminded me of this was something I saw happen at my church the other day. Our church (The Church at the Ridge) is all about the volunteers and serving in the church and the community. I, myself, have been volunteering there for close to two and a half years now, and I've adored ever second of it. I was setting up my equipment (I do video) in the back, and I saw a man on our operations team walking around putting out the communication cards and offering envelops we put on the seats before the services. His son, maybe seven or eight years old, was trailing him. Now, the man was very efficient - speedily placing all the cards with care and precision. His son, though, asked 'Dad - how can I help?' His father smiled, and gave him half the stack of cards, and told him what to do. The boy proceeded to do what his father was doing. Maybe not as perfect or as fast as his father, but he was doing what his father told him to, and the father was smiling as he watched him do so.

So, what can we learn from this? I think both of these examples (mine, as a boy, and this father and son I saw at church) as well as yours can be the perfect illustration of how God delights and loves it when we're doing His work. We think that 'I might as well not volunteer or do anything - if God wants it done, he'll do it himself.' While God has every ability to finish his work himself, he gives us the incredible opportunity to help him accomplish his works. Does he need our help? Of course not - he's God. But he loves to see us ask him 'Father - how can I help?'

I'm not a father yet, but sometimes, I get to work with kids at church. I love serving in children's ministry and childcare, on the very rare occasions I get to. When a child asks to help with something, what do you say? "No, I can do this on my own. Go away." or do you go out of your way to make a child feel valued and important by finding him something, even if something little like driving a nail, or putting out cards, or by letting a little girl add the milk into the mixing bowl, or letting a little boy wash the car - allowing these little kids to do these things, I think, is a perfect model of what God invites us to do when he invites us to be apart of the BIG things he's doing.

But he's not just going to make us, no. Those would be like the chores we had growing up, and kind of a way of us 'working our way into Heaven.' No - we must first ask 'Father - how can I help?' Once we truly and passionately want to not only follow God, but SERVE God, then he will invite us to do big, epic, extraordinary things that are God-sized. How cool is that!? That God actually loves you as a child so much, he basically says "Hey, champ! Guess what? I've got a little job for you to do - you want to help?"

We can learn a lot from kids - this is just one thing. If a child wants to do something like that, don't shoot them down. Invite them to help you, just like God has invited YOU to be a part of his work. Model God for the little kids. If you don't, maybe no one else will.