love like a little child

As I travel around, I have been around a lot of children of late. This morning I asked God what it was that He wanted to teach me from the experiences that I am having around children. I was led to think of Enoh. This little boy never hesitates to express his love. Yesterday at lunch he said “I love you” individually to just about everyone in the room. He is a loving child. We can learn to express our love freely from him. Love for our Father and love for one another. When I arrived the other night, I was greeted with his enthusiastic greeting “chica Tom” (Uncle Tom in Croatian). He knew I was coming and was glad to see me. What can I learn from this? I can apply that greeting this way: as my Lord has promised to return, I can look forward to it with great joy. And I can be ready. How? By abiding with Him now and keeping myself fit to be in presence, living in His Gospel by recognizing that I am a mess and living a life of repentance (“God help me, I can’t, so you must”) and faith (“Lord build my faith, give me the strength to lift the shield of faith”). If I am in constant communion with Him in this way, I am ready to receive Him whenever it is time for Him to come. I learned one more thing… or should I say I am reminded of one more thing through my time with Enoh, Our heavenly Father is incredibly patient. I have observed amazing patience in the parenting of Enoh’s mom and dad (Enoh is 2 1/2!). This has reminded me that God is patient with me and that I require a lot of patience from Him because of my fallen-ness. Thankfully. I rest in His righteousness and I dwell in his patient embrace and walk in His patient guidance. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when He told us to have faith like a little child. Faith that shows up as love… lived, said and walked.