Let the Little Children Show Us

I have three daughters.

As father to these amazing girls, I’ve found that two stories in the Bible consistently bring out the strongest emotions in me.

The first is a story of a dad named Jairus. He’s a religious leader who pleads with Jesus to cure his daughter (Luke 8). Jesus agrees to go with him, but along the road they keep getting interrupted.

I find myself in Jairus’ sandals, screaming inside for everyone to just get out of the way. Before they make it to the house, though, they’re interrupted again. It turns out they’re too late. Jairus is told that his beloved daughter is dead.

Jesus simply looks at this dad and tells him to believe. So they continue on to the house. Jesus interrupts the funeral preparations to promptly raise the girl from the dead and present her back to mom and dad.

Yikes – I have a hard time even typing that without choking up. What do you say to the man who gives you back your daughter?

The other story that gets-me-every-time is about a servant girl (2 Kings 5). I don’t like to think of what she went through. Torn away from all that was familiar, she’s a victim of child-trafficking. She’s enslaved and taken to a foreign land. I imagine her crying at night, struggling to learn a new language, longing for home, desperate for a friend...

to read more, check out a post I wrote for Story Warren called Let the Little Children Show Us.

Grace and Peace,
Alan