When I’m picking up tiny puzzle pieces, crayons that are broken on the floor and the mess in the high chair for the fifth time that day, it hardly feels important. It feels repetitive…like just a different day with the same messes. It doesn’t feel worthy of being noticed or praised, it doesn’t feel like I’m fulfilling my calling and it certainly doesn’t feel like kingdom work.
Even if it doesn’t feel like it, I know in my heart that it is.
Did you know that God thinks so highly of children? In Mark chapter 10, people were bringing children to Jesus, and Jesus’ disciples tried to shoo them away. In the Message version it says, “But Jesus was irate and let them know it: ‘Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom’…Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.”
I would love to have seen this. I think most people would be in shock to see this. Really? A bunch of crazy kids who were probably disobeying their parents all morning long and didn’t finish their chores. They were probably still wearing their breakfast all over their shirts and THOSE are the ones that Jesus says are the center of life in the kingdom. Wow! If only we would see our children the way that Jesus did on that day and the way that He still does today.
I think that when we start thinking of our kids the way that Christ does, we will start shifting our mindset from the everyday normal routine to a true Kingdom work mindset. This should make that next feeding, the next midnight wake up call, the disaster in the next room feel like less of an annoyance and more of an opportunity. An opportunity to show them that they are so loved through the mess, to give them grace in the accidents and the siblings fights, to slow down and listen when they say “Hey, Mom!” for what feels like the thousandth time in a minute. An opportunity to love them like Jesus loves them.
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