Friday August 18th: Sacrificial love
August 18, 2023
Sunday August 20th: Standing as a witness of Jesus
August 20, 2023

Saturday August 19th: Serving Children in Jesus’ name

” Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

Matthew 19: 13-15

Many years ago, I took my nephew and nieces to a live children’s production. The hall was crowded, and some children were standing and blocking the view of the stage. I was incensed that their parents did not discipline them and ask them to sit. I restrained myself from speaking sternly to them. My own prejudice was getting the better of me. In no time at all, my nieces and nephews were in conversation with the “errant children” in front and laughing and playing with them. They were NOT concerned that their newfound friends were standing and blocking.

Children represent the vulnerable in our society and are not only a picture of what it is like to live in God’s kingdom. The way we treat children, the vulnerable, affects our ability to enter His kingdom. Serving children/the vulnerable in Jesus’s name is entering the kingdom… ‘Thy kingdom come’. Despising and ignoring children/ the vulnerable is missing the kingdom. Jesus reminds us that we are to be like children if we are to belong to the kingdom of heaven.