OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

 Reading: Philemon 1:7

We had spent a long, intense week on the Rez conducting Bible School for our sister Navajo congregation at Tsaile AZ.  It was at times both challenging and exhilarating.  It stretched as individual and drew us together as a team.  The first two days we wondered if most of the kids were even paying attention.  The third day we saw our first young person ask Jesus into their heart. There were to be seven more the next day.  It had rained often and made a muddy mess of our afternoons and evenings. The dorms were too cold for some and too hot for others.

But now it was the last minutes of the closing for our VBS.  I was going to share some parting words and then we would serve the kids before sending them home, and then getting ourselves loaded into vans heading for Albuquerque where we would catch a flight home to Pennsylvania.  We had asked the children to pray for the meal and only yesterday had the first child (about ten years old) done so.  And she needed a lot of prompting to overcome her sudden stage fright.  

Maria brought little six-year old Shane, a sweet little Navajo girl dressed in a pink top. Shane had volunteered to pray.  She took the microphone began – quietly, a bit more focused. She thanked God for the week, for what we had learned, for God himself, and for the meal.  And then she added, “And watch over Steve and his team as they travel back to their homes.   Make them safe. Amen.”

I lost it.  I gave her a squeeze and sent her off to eat.  Then I turned away towards the altar with tears flowing from my eyes.  When I turned back I saw almost a dozen of my team members wiping their eyes as well.  We had been blessed by the thoughtful, insightful prayer of a little girl mature beyond her years.  If we had still wondered why we made the journey, all questions were at an end.

In the earliest days of the church, Paul wrote to a man named Philemon and he paid Philemon the ultimate compliment.  These those words: "Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints." (Philemon 1:7)