There is a little story in the Inspiration section.
On the face of it, it is just funny.
But the more you think about it, the more profund it becomes.
The story is about a little girl doing
her art project at school.
The teacher stops by her desk and asks
her what she is drawing.
"A picture of God," the
little girl replies.
The teacher, a little perplexed, tells
the little girl, "But nobody knows what God looks like."
"They will in a minute," the
little girl replies.
There are so many magnificent layers
to that one short story.
The first is the confidence of a
child.
The little girl never doubted that she
could capture God's likeness. She did not know the meaning of failure. Plus, She did not
need to see God to draw God, she was drawing God as she felt Him.
In her heart, rooted in her mind, the
little Girl knew what God looked like to her.
In our mind's eye, we too all have an
image of God but we are not so presumptuous as to draw it on paper, or to share it with
others.
The little girl had none of those
inhabitions. She knew God. She did not have to be told what He looked like because she
knew Him.
How many of us can claim to know God
like that little girl knew God.
Jesus knew that for us to REALLY get
what He was all about, we had to look at things with a child-like innocence. We had to let
the child-in-us order the steps of the adult.
A child has no agenda. A child does
not come into the world with a lot of expectations. A child has not developed negativity.
A child is not born with bigotry.
We learn a lot during our lives. Most
of which serves to keep us from knowing God Our Father and His Son Jesus.
Jesus worked from within a framework
of pure love, that only can be found naturally in a child.
As an adult, we have to forget a lot
of what we know, just to be able to follow Jesus.
And Jesus made it easy on us. He
realized when we had ten laws to follow, we probably would forget one or two along the
way.
So he compressed things into a short
and easy package that a child instinctively could follow. As adults, we still have
problems following.
He told us to Love the Lord Our God
with all our hearts, minds and souls. As much as God has demonstrated His love for us, how
could we miss following that one. But we do!
Then he said, Love thy neighbor as
yourself.
Anything you would not do to youself,
don't do to your neighbor.
At its face, it too is very
simplistic. And it still includes everything that was in the 10 commandants but just
simplified.
You would not kill yourself. You would
not steal from yourself. If you are working from the envelope of love, you will honor
those who gave you life.
All seems simple, easy to follow. But
we don't.
To follow Jesus, to honor God, we have
to peel off some of the callouses the world places on us every year of our life. We have
to remember what it was like to be a child, before we had gathered such set in stone
opinions.
Back when we looked at the world
through color-blind eyes. Back when we loved without qualification. Back when we would do
anything for anybody without question or return. T
hat description of a little child's
outlook, sounds a lot like Jesus doesn't it?
The little girl in art class, she felt
she knew God.
She was envisoning someone just like
her, who loved just because it was the right thing to do.
Today, I am not asking you to draw
God, but I am asking that you try to picture Him, but not throuigh your today's adult
eyes.
Take a moment, let your mind wander
back through time, and think of God as you knew him when you still had your pure innocence
of childhood.
The picture you now are seeing in your
mind and feeling in your heart, is the same picture the little girl was capturing on her
paper.
Look at God this way each and every
day. For unless we can recapture that part of our childhood, it will be difficult to enter
the kingdom of heaven. Suffer the little children. And may we be children at all ages. For
a child shall lead them.
