Don't Send the Children Away

You know how sometimes the grown-ups are busy?

Their voices go up high and serious. They lean in close to each other and talk about important things, and you stand there at their elbows, waiting. Hoping someone will notice you. And nobody does.

That is a little bit how this day began.

There were mamas and papas carrying their children to Jesus. Little ones who could barely toddle. Babies wrapped tight and sleepy. Bigger boys and girls tugging along behind, wanting to see the man everyone was talking about. The mamas and papas wanted just one thing. They wanted Jesus to put his hands on their children. To touch them. To bless them.

But the friends of Jesus said no.

"Not now," they said. "He's tired. He's busy. He has important, grown-up things to do, and these are only children. Take them home. Go on. Away with you."

Imagine being carried up so close, so close to Jesus, and then being turned around and sent back. Told you were too small, too much trouble, not the kind of person who mattered today.

That is a lonely feeling, to be little in a world that only seems to have room for the big.

Then Jesus stopped, the way he always stopped for the ones everyone else hurried past. He was always stopping for the ones everyone else hurried past. And the look on his face was not the look his friends expected. He was not pleased with them. Not one bit. "Don't you dare," he said. "Don't send the children away. Let them come to me. Don't ever stand in their way."

And then he said the most surprising thing of all.

"Because the kingdom of God belongs to ones just like these."

Just like these: the small ones, the ones with sticky hands and sleepy eyes, the ones too little to be useful and too young to be important. The very ones the grown-ups had tried to shoo off. The kingdom belonged to them.

The world hands out its love like a prize you have to be big and clever enough to win. But Jesus turned that upside down. In his kingdom, it is the small who are welcomed first. The ones with nothing to offer but their need. The ones who simply hold out their arms to be picked up.

And that is exactly what Jesus did. He picked them up. He gathered those children into his arms, one after another, and he laid his hands on their heads, and he blessed them. He took his time over every single head, because there was nowhere he would rather have been than right there, holding the ones nobody else had time for.

And he is still that same Jesus. Still the One who stops. Still the One who says, come here, come to me, don't be afraid that you are too little. He knows your name. He is gathering a whole family of small ones to himself, and he will not come home missing a single one.

You were never too little to matter to him.

You were exactly the one he was reaching for.