2:42am? Yikes, I’m not supposed to be up this late, but it seems like there is never enough time in the day, and always more to do. Even when I rush, prioritize my schedule, and work hard all day long, it sometimes seems as if I haven’t accomplished anything. Well, today was one of those days so I’m still up, but after I write this, I’ll be satisfied with my day.
Because of some special events happening in Mississauga, I’ve been taking care of children’s church not just Sunday morning and evening, but also Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening this week. The crowd gets bigger and bigger, and I’m in desperate need of more helpers. One of the small children (3 years old) is way to young to be in my class. She should be in the nursery, but the nursery is overcrowded, and she wants to be in my class anyway. The hardest part is when the smaller children want me to pick them up but I can’t because then all of them will want me to pick them up. This is okay when I’m taking care of 5, but when it’s 30, 48, 100+, it doesn’t matter how many helpers I have, I just can’t do it.
Anyway, back to the 3 year old. She is full of energy, and always on the move. We were all sitting quietly drawing pictures and playing with legos, and she was running around and making noise. I told her repeatedly “sweetie, come and sit down.” She didn’t listen, but instead she ran into a storage room, knocking down its contents in the process. She ran under a table, knocking down the items piled on top. I cleaned up the messes, and reached under the table, exhausted, “I am your friend, come out of there.” Well, she got so excited and happy that she tried to leap into the air with joy, forgetting that she was under the table. She hit her head, but being so young, she was resilient, and it didn’t even make her whimper. It did shut her up for a few minutes though, lol. She came out from hiding with a smile on her face (rubbing her head a bit), and she gave me a tight hug (don’t worry, her parents knew about the bump on her head). A few minutes later she was causing more trouble for me again.
Thank God for kids. When I think of the way that child acted, I think of us adults. We disobey God, then we go into a sort of hiding where we stray further away from God. In the midst of this, we get hurt. God saves us, then we start the whole thing all over again. Sometimes we have to be stopped in our tracks to find out how much God loves us, but we might have caused so much damage in our lives that God has to spend much time mending our hearts and helping us to clean up the mess. Jesus said that life brings enough trouble on its own, there is no need to make more for ourselves.