Faith like a child


God often uses our children to teach us important lessons. It helps that kids look at life without having it pass through the prism of a lifeitme's worth of accumulated cynicism.

Our church Sunday school is simply superb, as the teachers really care for the kids under their charge, and they instill solid moral values and Bible knowledge. Best of all, the kids are taught to put their faith into practice, outside the classroom, whether it's being honest, or caring for their family or contributing to the church.

In the build-up to various outreach events, the kids are encouraged to invite their school friends to come to Sunday school with them. Of course, the adults are encouraged to invite friends to church too, but I tell you, Nat really puts her heart and soul into this. She fearlessly invites her friends to Sunday school, and even when she is rejected, she keeps on going, friend after friend, and she is genuinely disappointed when they can't make it.

Why? Because she knows that it is important. And that there really is nothing better than being in the house of the Lord. I hope that as she grows up, she will continue to have this enthusiasm to share Christ with others. And that I will re-learn that same enthusiasm myself!

"He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:2-3

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life as a pie chart

Image
Someone told me recently about a "life exercise" in which one compiles all the stuff that makes up your life, and puts it in a pie chart.  So let's say for me, something like this. The idea is to visually demonstrate to myself that, in the event I lose one of these things, then I can see that, hey life is not so bad, that wasn't such a big deal.  Say for example, if I suffered a blown ACL, and couldn't run or play basketball any more, like this: At first blush - I'd say, hey, I still have my wife, children, parents, career, church life - so, chin up, things are not so bad.  Pretty good life visualisation tool to bring some optimism back into play! ... But what if, a month later, something happens at work, and boom, career gets sidetracked, I lose my job, or get put in cold storage somewhere, like this: Oops, now only half my life is left!  With only half of life's meaning left to me, what do I do? And what if something happens to
Read more

Bullying? Stand up!

Image
When I was a kid, I remember being bullied a fair bit.  I was small for my age, bespectacled, shy.    The teachers didn't help by putting a target on my back by making me Vice Head Prefect.  I would get my stuff just taken away from me by bigger kids, dragged out into the field to be tickled until I collapsed (much less fun than it sounds), and pushed into the storm drains.  Not all the kids were full-blown bullies of course.  But I remember some of them standing by, and politely holding my spectacles (so they wouldn't be broken) while the bullies did their work on me. Most of this stopped when I got to secondary school, where a much larger proportion of my fellow students were now just as nerdy!  And of course I grew up too.  I don't really look back on those days with any kind of animosity, because I think it never occurred to me that it was unusual.  But I do think my experience made me a bit more sympathetic about people around me who are being bullied. When you
Read more

Family AND Team

Image
I heard an interesting viewpoint this weekend. A family is not inherently a team. Hmm.  Sometimes at work, often in church, and most of the time at home, you hear people say to each other that we are family. And often, we really are. We care for each other above and beyond transactional matters.  It matters to me when my colleagues and cell group members (and of course my actual family members) go through illnesses or family issues or work challenges. I root for their success at presentations and projects and relationships. I care about what they care about, even if it has little direct impact on my own life. In a way, a family is sort of an amalgam of people who support each other in pursuit of each member's personal goals. For example, as a father, I support my children in their academic, career and ministry goals. But where they go to school, the grades they get, and the careers and ministries they build - they're really their goals, not mine.  Ditto for my role as a church
Read more