The Power of a Child

Janessa Grace Krueger

This is our newest granddaughter, Janessa. She survived our recent family picture taking adventure by.....sleeping.  Even as she was being posed between her siblings and cousin she seemed oblivious to her rapidly sinking sitting arrangement.  Nor did she mind or even know about the huge flower growing out of the side of her head.  She simply slept at peace.

 There is something almost paradoxical about a child.  They are absolutely dependent and vulnerable yet they hold great power over those who love and care for them.  Perhaps its the idea that their condition reminds us of the vulnerabilities and helplessness we can feel inside.  As they grow, their interactions with the world around them, their joy and laughter; their insatiable explorations; their wonder about simple things; brings us all back to the essence of life.  In the end, despite our efforts to control and master our lives, we are all as needy and vulnerable as a child in the face of all that is important in our world.  And eternal.....

The power of child-likeness.  I wonder if that is why God chose that means to identify with us by stepping into His creation as a baby.  Isaiah put it this way:

For to us a child is born,

    to us a son is given,

  The One who spoke the world into existence and holds it together by His own power became a baby.  He entrusted Himself into the hands of those whom He formed in wombs of their mothers.  And Luke says that as they cared for Him in his formative years that He grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and with man.  (Luke 2:52)  And once He began to teach, He said that unless we come to His Kingdom like a little child, we will never enter into it.

This will be a fun Christmas for us as we watch the little ones find as much enjoyment in the bows and boxes as they do what is inside them.  But my prayer is that we can feel our need to be just like them.  Innocent. Unpretentious; Dependent; and Loving.  Charles Wesley wrote of the end game of all this in his hymn "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling"

Finish, then, Thy new creation;

Pure and spotless let us be.

Let us see Thy great salvation

Perfectly restored in Thee;

Changed from glory into glory,

Till in heaven we take our place,

Till we cast our crowns before Thee,

Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Do you enjoy the peace of a sleeping child in the midst of the chaos around you like Janessa?  Jesus came as a child, lived as an obedient Son to both His earthly parents and Heavenly Father, died and rose again, in order to restore child-like qualities in all of us.  And the good news is that we all can experience that this Christmas.