More About Flowers

"Suffer the little children come unto Me..."

These are the words of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. I am not exactly sure which verse these words are in and I am too tired to get my Bible and find them and I am fairly certain Jesus did not say them in English but nonetheless these are the words that come to mind.

For the last two days we have hosted a back yard Bible Club of sorts in a shanty town called Red Hill. (I encourage you to visit my posting on last year's South Africa blog and read the first installment about flowers in Red Hill.)

Although I am a Dad, LOVING it by the way, I still get a bit overwhelmed when I am surrounded by sixty or so children all in need of attention. This is the situation we have been in for a few hours each day. Semi-controlled mayhem is the description that comes to mind. I see these children and see them craving love and attention. Many of them have lost one or more parents to AIDS. Many of them are abused. Many of them are malnourished and sick themselves, and yet all they want is someone to pay them a little loving attention.

I struggled with coming here and leaving my son Elijah. I knew I would miss his smile and the cuteness of his trying new words and the feel of his tiny arms around my neck. What I have realised though is how much he is loved by parents, grandparents, and a host of other relatives.

I have come here to share God's love, however I was not expecting that to be in the form or feeling of my fatherly love for Elijah. I am gaining a much better understanding of what God expects from us as Christians. I keep feeling like I should be vocally sharing the gospel with each of these children but I continually get frustrated with the language barrier.

As I sat there yesterday the afore mentioned verse came to mind. The kids were all around and I was unsure of what to do with them when I realized that Jesus did not speak deep theology to the children, he just let them come to him as they were and he loved them. He then used this action to teach deep theology to the adults.

This is where the flowers come in.

Having this realization about sharing the love of God the way I would show love to my son, I picked up a crayon and drew a very rudimentary flower for a little girl.
Next thing I new, kids were coming from all over and saying one word.

"Flower?"

Several broken crayons later I realized I had learned a lot about how simple and confoundingly deep God's love truly is.

Ethan