Jesus and some children

It was a messy game day!

It was a fun Friday morning… even if it was a little gloomy and cold. The rain held off and we were able to have a great time hanging out, getting messy, and talking about life and Jesus. 

Getting ready

The game was a bit wilder than normal for Friday mornings, but it was fun. Kids had to get into teams, then select one person from the team to put a shower cap covered in shaving creme on their head. Once the game started, kids had to throw Trix cereal at their teammate with the shower cap and try to have them catch it on their head.

Jackson catching Trix!

I honestly don't know who won, but everyone had a really good time!

After, everyone ran around for a while trying to start an all out shaving creme fight. Thankfully we were able to keep that from happening as we transitioned into the more serious time of the morning. It can be difficult to play games like we did today, and then go straight into a time of talking and teaching, but I truly think its a good thing. These kind of games let kids be kids. It isn't every day that they get to do something like this before school, and while it can be difficult to control, I think it shows them that we care, and we want them to have fun.

Mackenzie was into it!

I had the privilege of teaching this morning and got to share a story from Mark 10:13-16 where Jesus hangs out with some little children.

In the story, Jesus and his disciples were taking a break on their journey to Jerusalem. I imagine that the air was thick with anticipation. Jesus was making his way to the city where he would be crucified. He knew what was going to happen there, and while his followers didn't, they knew something big was about to happen. 

As they were resting, some parents came with their children, most likely between the ages of 0-5, and wanted Jesus to meet them and bless them. Jesus had gotten a reputation as someone extremely special. Really great things happened wherever he went and people were getting healed all around him. these parents wanted their kids to get a chance to be touched by Jesus.

The disciples thought differently. They saw these parents and their kids as a nuisance, and tried to get rid of them before they bothered Jesus.

Back in those days people didn't think much of kids. While kids were a blessing for a family and a way of keeping the family name going, they were predominately a burden until they were old enough to help out. Also, there was an extremely high child mortality rate, and up to 50% of children didn't survive their first 12 years. The disciples just didn't think that Jesus would want to waist his time with kids. They thought Jesus had more important things to do. They thought that Jesus was too big of a deal to spend his time with normal kids.

They were wrong.

This is one of the seldom times where the author of Mark says that Jesus was upset with his disciples. He saw them telling the parents and kids to go away and got angry. He told his disciples to let the children come, and then proceeded to pick them up in his arms. As he was doing this he told the disciples something crazy, he told them, "the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these."

Then he went even further and told his disciples that, "anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

This would have been radical. 

First, Jesus, God, stopped what he was doing and spent time with little kids. He wasn't too busy, too distracted, or annoyed that people were waisting his time. He picked the kids up and blessed them. It seems that this shows a lot about the character of Jesus. He was the kind of guy that would stop for the lowest of the low, for the people no one else wanted to be around, and he also enjoyed the company of children. Yes, he was on the greatest mission the world has ever known, but he stopped for kids. This seems to paint a picture of a person that smiles easily, is full of joy and grace, and laughs often. 

Secondly, Jesus switches things up when he says that unless people accept the posture of a child, they will never enter the kingdom of God. In those days kids were nothing, and they knew it. One of the greatest characteristics of children then was humility. Jesus is saying that without humility, we cannot experience the kingdom of God, we cannot experience true life.

It can be easy to think that Jesus doesn't have time for us, but this story helps to show that he does. The Creator of the universe stopped what he was doing to spend time with children… he does the same with us. No matter what, Jesus will always stop and take time to be with us. Also, he doesn't require anything of us in order for us to get to be with him. We do not need to be good enough, or important enough, or clean enough. Jesus desires that we come to him in humility, that we come to his as we are. 

Jesus spent time with children, and he desire to spend time with us. He is ok if we are messy, covered in shaving creme, or just covered in the mess of life. He doesn't need us to get cleaned up, or be on our best behavior. His desire is that we come to him as we are, in humility, as a child would.

Tyler was more excited than he might look.