Hola, friends! My team and I are in Chincha, Peru, and I’m finally ready to get some blogs posted.
First, my apologies for the delay. I have several blog posts on my heart, and I will be posting all of them here shortly. Thank you so much for your patience! Now onto the first blog post from Peru — my blog category for Peru is “Potatoes Are Peruvian” (because the potato species originates from Peru…so all potatoes are Peruvian), and the title of this post is LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN.
Our ministry this month includes KIDS DAY twice per week (Thursdays and Fridays). The kids here are pretty….erm, how should I say it? Very rambunctious. 🙂 Seriously, though, they are a handful, and so to expend some of their energy before Kids Day, we usually start by having them play outside for about half an hour. Soccer, football, jumprope…we split up with the kids and play whatever they feel like playing.
One of the little boys, Luciano, wanted to play catch with a small (American) football. He’s pretty young (about 3 years old), and he doesn’t actually have the motor skills to catch yet. He can throw (sort of), but when trying to catch the ball, his little arms just flail about, and his hand-eye coordination simply isn’t there. My answer to this problem was to toss the football in his general direction and to where it would always fall short, allowing the ball to land in front of him so all he has to do is bend over and pick it up. Sometimes the ball would even bounce or roll all the way to him.
Little Luciano from our Kids Day ministry. Isn’t he precious? 🙂
We played for a little while. Eventually, though, I noticed he was getting distracted. One of the other kids would squeal or shout, and Luciano would try to figure out where the cry was coming from. Sometimes he would be looking around and simply get distracted by the other activities going on around us. He especially liked the jumprope, and he would watch as the girls took turns with that. I waited patiently each time, standing by while he would check things out.
Suddenly, he would remember I was there, that we were playing catch, and his attention would snap back to me. But the longer we played, the more frequently he became distracted, and for longer periods of time. I began having to call out to him: “Lucianoooo!” I would say playfully. Sometimes he glanced back at me, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes I had to call him several times, while other times he seemed to remember something about a game — he would begin to turn my direction — but I would have to wave to fully regain his attention.
Then I realized: Isn’t that us? Aren’t we constantly getting distracted by the world around us? Television, jobs, friends, family, bills, music…but God stands by, waiting patiently for us. He is always so gentle, tenderly speaking our names or waving to regain attention. Sometimes He just sits there and waits, not saying a word and letting us be — letting us live and learn — until we’re ready to turn back to Him.
I’d like to challenge you to take a moment in prayer and visualize yourself as a child. Imagine that your walk with God is like a game of catch you’re playing with God. Now stop and think about what it is that’s distracting you from Him…is it friends? Family? Your job? A debt?
Now think about one way you could — instead of turning AWAY from God in these distractions, that you could actually bring Him into them. Maybe you could pray to Him each time you think about a problem. Or maybe you could ask Him for help with it. If your distractions are something like TV/movies/music, why not try asking God what he’d like to watch/listen to. You might very well be surprised by His answer. 🙂
Beware that you don’t look down on any of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly Father. -Matthew 18:10
