I will make you fishers of men...

Last Sunday, the pre-school kids all got up on stage and sang one of the Sunday school songs that we all learned when we were that age...

"I will make you fishers of men
fishers of men
fishers of men
I will make you fishers of men
if you follow Me

if you follow Me
if you follow Me
I will make you fishers of men
if you follow Me..."

They had hand motions to go with it (you know, acting like they are casting their fishing line...) and they were absolutely adorable. I love kids.

Anyway, after they sang, while the kids were still all assembled on the stage, the most incredible thing happened... The worship team came back up on stage, and sang along with the kids, leading the whole congregation in this Sunday school song. :) I so loved it. It was fun to sing along with the kids like that.

I work with pre-school age kids a lot anyway, but I know that the majority of the people in the sanctuary do not. The kids get up and sing, and everybody thinks they are just the cutest kids as they sing their little song and then go on their way, back to their classrooms. And I mean, they are cute. They are sweet. But why watch them from a distance when we can be involved in their lives and teach them about God and about Love? I think it is easy for people to watch and listen to the kids sing, or for people to even teach a pre-school class, and look down on the kids. It is usually very unintentional, but I still see it all the time. It is so easy to think of them as "just kids"... but God made them too. God Loves them just as much as he loves grown-ups. I think He so loves the way small children will befriend anybody and everybody, without looking at them judgmentally or critically. They are not going to shun someone because of dirty clothes or a handicap or whatever.

It can be really humbling to work with kids. It often puts me in situations where I am not really acting my age. But you know, there is nothing wrong with that. Just have fun with the kids. Be a good example to them. Be goofy. Sing their Sunday school songs with them. Watch a "little-kid" movie. Read them a book... over and over and over (and they definitely will ask that sometimes!) If I don't relate to the kids, then how am I going to teach them about God? How can I live like Him, how can I live Him to them? Jesus always made the little children welcome. He would never turn them away or say that He did't have time for them right then. Shouldn't I be just like Him? (Philippians 2; 1 John 2:5-6; Mark 10:14)

He will make us fishers of men... if we follow Him. Sometimes that means we are fishers of children. Little children. And that means getting on the floor and playing with them. It means speaking 2-year-old language. (I don't even know how many different 2-year-olds I have worked with, but they all have those words that you just have to know what they are saying to understand them... I've learned to speak Josh, and Stevie, and Lydia, and Megan, and Ethan, and Ellie, and Eli, etc...) :) Whatever it means to follow God in our specific situations, we must be willing to do that. And if we follow God... He will make us fishers of men. :)