‘…Like a Little Child’ – Sue Campbell

Mandy Ward and I have the pleasure of teaching the 3 year old Kingdom Kids class at 11:00 on Sunday mornings.  A few weeks ago, our lesson was about how Jesus loves little children.  Our craft that day was coloring a red paper heart and attaching it to a popsicle stick.  The heart read:  “Jesus loves _____” and we wrote the child’s name on the line.  Our class likes to be adventurous, so Mandy and I thought we’d see if they’d like to walk around the church to show their hearts to the people they’d meet.  Before we left our room, we practiced holding our hearts up in the air and saying:  “Jesus loves you!” 

Once everyone was ready to go, we were off to see who we could tell our good news to.  First, we found the morning’s incident coordinator, Mr. Sosebee.  Our little group stuck our paper hearts out and announced “Jesus loves you!”  The kids were so excited when he said:  “Thanks, Jesus loves you too!”  Next we found Mrs. Keaton in the bookstore, and some ushers in the lobby.  Same thing happened with them too!

At that point, neither Mandy or I had to encourage them to keep finding people to tell – they were excited!  They told the kids and helpers in the nursery and practically ran down the hall to the Kingdom Quest and BRIDGE56 rooms.  It didn’t matter who it was, how big or small, how many or few, they were on a mission to deliver the news about Jesus’ love! 

Reflecting back, I can see why Jesus loves little children so much – they’re not afraid to tell anyone and everyone about him, and the more they do, the more excited they are about it!  Sadly though, as we get older, we tend to get more fearful.  We get concerned about what people will think, if we’d use the right words, if we’d offend someone… why do we make things more complicated than they need to be?

As we near Valentine’s Day and the season of Lent – it’s a perfect time to share the greatest news of all about love - let’s try to do it as simply and enthusiastically as a 3 year old - “JESUS LOVES YOU!”