Wednesday, July 13, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Let the little children come
The children mill around and their voices, their indistinguishable words, fill the air. They eat anything they get their hands on. They jump and run and laugh and run into each other. There are hundreds of kids all in this big room with the high ceiling, like a gymnasium. Windows are high so the kids won’t run into them and fall through, bleeding and broken and suddenly sobbing in pain and fear.
Their emotions go up and down like tops. They are all hungry, and tired, and thirsty, and exhausted after a very long walk from the bottom of the mountain to the top. But nurses and fishermen and farmers and grandmas are there to greet them, arms open hide. Come and rest, little ones. Our savior will soon be here.
The adults don’t serve Kool-Aid. They don’t make promises they might not be able to keep. Their confidence is based on faith, not news stories. Our savior will soon be here. That evening a great fun worship and healing time is planned, sitting on the floor, no chairs, no pews. It could start anytime, really; why wait for a certain moment? Chronos time gets little shrift in this mountain home; its time is the Kairos kind.
Above the doors it does not say ora et labora; it says “Your eternity starts now!” This is not a prophecy of death exactly, except the death of ego and earthbound hopes and dreams. There is nothing down in the valley anyone needs. Why go back there? Why not just Look Up! Our savior is almost here.
I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
And what if someone wants to leave? Maybe one of the “wise and the learned.” Perhaps they feel manipulated by the crowd, and they imagine it’s all being managed by a master puppeteer. Why not? People are not trustworthy; they are not loving. Since the awful mistakes in the Garden of Eden, they have turned on each other and killed, rather than comforted.
Education of the young ones always hinges on the values of the older ones. What do our children need to learn in order to maintain the culture we learned to maintain from our parents? How is God going to get a word in edgewise? Does he even want to? Does he care?
All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
Cults can grow in this culture. I know the Son and you don’t. I have heard from my Father, but you haven’t. Follow me. Listen to me, and I will give you peace.
God sorts out cults from churches just as he winnows the weeds and the wheat. They look alike at first, so he waits to see the fruit. He invites us to stay with him while he waits. Let’s just watch and see, he says. And in the meantime, feel free to run and jump and eat ice cream, and play all day. Be a child as long as you can. And let Me do the judging.
The Lord will not abandon his people. Shall he who shaped the ear not hear? Or he who formed the eye not see?
As God’s children slowly fall off to sleep, what dreams may come to settle down on their souls, granting them rest, granting us rest also, as we choose to be childlike in God’s wisdom, not our own.
(Isaiah 10, Psalm 94, Matthew 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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