There have been several moments on the race where I’ve been so blessed by children and things the Lord shows me through them. One of these precious moments occurred this past Sunday, and I thought I’d share it with y’all. 🙂
Disclaimer:
I am a journaler.
I like to journal, and I’ve journaled for a long time. I even have some journals that go back to elementary school.
Rarely EVER do I read my entries aloud to another or let some one else read them. They’re pretty private.
I think you get the point – I like to journal, I like to keep my journals, and it is something I don’t really share with others.
Now, to this past Sunday in church…
On Sunday I sat in a pew in the back of the church with two little girls on either side of me.
Liza, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Cindy-Loo-Who-look-alike,
and Nastia, a dark curly-haired girl with piercing green eyes.
The latter of the two has been attending our children’s program during the week, and the former is the daughter of two members from the church.
Given that Liza handed our team a picture she had drawn during church the previous week, I figured it would be okay to let them draw during church. The only form of blank paper I had was in my journal, so I ripped out two pages and gave them each a sheet and a pen.
So, I’m standing there, singing and praying, while they’re drawing and munching on some pretzels provided by one of their parents. After a little while I turn around to give them an approving smile, only to find that one of them found my journal and proceeded to draw little hearts with arrows through them…on all of my journal entries.
My first reaction was “Fiddlesticks! She’s drawing all over my journal!”
And then, she looked up at me.
She looked up with the biggest grin ever, just to show me what she had drawn, and it felt like the Lord was telling me in that moment,
“Just relax.”
Once Liza finished drawing on both sides of the paper, she just sat there with this expression of “Now what?” written on her face. Instead of telling her (through charades, of course) “Welp, there’s no more paper, sorry,” I quickly ripped out more pages for her to draw on. She took the pages and each time she finished one she eagerly held it up to me, waiting for my reaction.
This whole process of drawing, ripping out more pages from my journal, looking up and showing me their masterpieces, and handing me pretzel sticks every so often went on until the sermon began and the children left the sanctuary.
I’ll admit, this story might not seem spectacular, but I think it’s simple, precious moments like these that remind me that ministry includes the small things, too. I like to think that were Jesus sitting in my spot that day, he would have been smiling, munchin’ on some pretzels, and encouraging those two precious girls to keep on drawing. And instead of getting frustrated now whenever I look through my journal and find hearts scribbled on all the pages, I’m just gonna smile and thank the Lord for that precious moment with two of His daughters. 🙂
