"I SLIDE!"

(I posted this on my other blog in July 2008. My son was less then 2 years old at the time and I was working at a Martial Arts school with kids.)

It’s funny how much you can learn from watching children. Spending so much time with Thomas at home and with the kids at Karate camp, I spend a lot of time evaluating myself because of things that they will do or say. Last weekend a group of friends and I took the kiddos to the park to play. It was extremely crowded so I was sticking close to little T to make sure he didn’t get lost in the crowd or fall off the steps that led to the slide. As Thomas climbed up toward the slide he said (with a HUGE grin on his face) “Hi. I slide” to every child that he passed. If you’ve been around my little man very much you know that he is like his daddy in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that he takes a little while to warm up to people that he doesn’t know, so for him to be so open about this whole slide thing was a rare thing, indeed. Sliding is his favorite thing and he couldn’t wait to tell everyone he saw about the slide. It didn’t matter if he passed a boy or a girl, if they were black or white, bigger than him or smaller, he had to tell them about the slide because he was SO excited. He even had these two four year old girls look at him and say “What you want?” (cracked me up! However, it did remind me of your typical Montgomery service, but that’s another blog for another time). But that didn’t discourage him. He just went right on telling folks about the slide.

You can probably see where I’m going with this but I’ll say it anyway. Isn’t that how we should be when it comes to God’s Word? We meet people sometimes and automatically think that they probably wouldn’t care, or they don’t seem like the “type” that would be interested in God’s word, so we write them off. But who are we to pick and choose?? When Thomas looks at a person that’s what he sees, another person. He is so excited about that slide that he is about to slide down that he thinks everyone he passes should know about it, too. Imagine if we all had that kind of excitement and zeal when it comes to God and Jesus; if we said to everyone that passed us “Hi. I’m a Christian!”

'At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Matt 18 1-4